Homebound: The Timeshatterer and the Stoneweaver
by TheOne16th
Summary: Compelled by the burden of responsibility and a homeward yearning, two paths in search of redemption intertwine: one of fear and woven stone, and another of guilt and shattered time. (Important update on last chapter AN. Announcement on first chapter.). [UNDER REVISION]
1. Author's Briefer

**Announcement**

 **This story is undergoing a major revision.**

As those following this story probably already know, I am not updating this story until I finish the whole thing. I am currently passing this around in a writing group, doing intense lore research, making plot and character charts, and drastically adjusting my writing style based on the critiques I get from my group. I have also joined the Necrit and Lore of League Discord servers to help me in inferring certain universe elements that are crucial to the story. To those interested, please join. I don't think there's a better repository of lore knowledge anywhere else.

I have poured a lot of effort into this story to be honest. I'm planning on releasing a Google Docs link to the final book version of this story (which I will not monetize). There you will see its cover, a neat little chapter design I've made, and other things that FF's current formatting doesn't allow me to put.

To those still following and checking, hang on tight. My goal is to finish this story before 3 months. If I haven't finished it by then, then I have to move on. In the mean time, I'm doing my very best to ensure this story's quality in the limited time frame that I have. This story's quite a challenge and marks my transition to writing original works. I have learned a ton of lessons so far in that regard thanks to my writing group, so if you're a writer, please do not underestimate the value of critique. It has gone a long way for me.

If you're interested in updates, I sometimes tweet about this story in my Twitter: Galahad Vinel. Follow or not, it's alright. You can check on in me there.

All said, I'm working hard to complete this story, so hang on tight! By the time it's finished, it'll be a fully fleshed out novel which I will totally not monetize through publishing. It's fan fiction, I know, but the lessons I've learned writing it will last me a long, long time.

Disclaimer: I do not own League of Legends or any of the publicly available user-made material which I've utilized. All rights belong to their respective owners.

Credits to Riot's narrative team for the lore and the characters, particularly to Thermal Kitten and FauxSchizzle for writing the narrative of the amazing characters of Taliyah and Ekko. Also credits to Bioluminescence for her writing advice.

 **Inputted Meanings**

Throughout the story, you might encounter some little details that have hidden meanings or explanations to them. These are usually, but are not limited to, names and numbers that may seem randomly made-up but actually have a second layer to their construction. They may or may not be symbols connected to other details in the story. I leave that up to you. So to know these meanings, refer to this section.

My basis for inputted meanings mostly stem from a play on language. For example. I use the numerical values of Hebrew (each letter has a set value, and to get the value of words, you simply add them), and word roots from Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages (which will be revealed in the future).

 **Chapter 1 (First Rewind of the Day)**

 _Timekeeper:_

Three hours. Six minutes. Zero seconds. = 360 = אַשׁמָה (Ashamah)= Grief

 _Tally:_

Thirty-three days = 33 = אֵבֶל (Evel) = Mourning

 _Admission's Book:_

... Year '275... = 275= אִי סֶדֵר (Yi Seder) = Chaos

 **Chapter 2 (Withdrawal)**

 _Timekeeper:_

Three hours. Forty-five minutes = 345 = אַשְׁלָיָה (Ashelaiah) = Illusion.

Four hours. Five minutes. = גְאוּלָה (Geuhla) = Redemption.

 **Chapter 3 (Unwound)**

 _Timekeeper:_

Nine hours. Three minutes. Five seconds. = 935 = הִרהוּרֵי תְשׁוּבָה (Hirhurei teshuva) = Repentance

 **Chapter 4 (Tears Beneath I)**

Not my own inputted meaning, but Taliyah's name has Semitic roots. According to the wiki, it is Hebrew, but some have interpreted to be Arabic. It means little lamb or dew. This was intended by, Taliyah's writer, Thermal Kitten.

 **Chapter 5 (Tears Beneath II)**

 _Tribal Names:_

Nivim (ניבים) = Fangs.

As intended by Thermal Kitten, Nasaaj has an Arabic root (nasij) which means "to weave".

 _Greetings:_

"Ahm-sjhal" and "uhm-tzal" when reversed by their syllables are pronounced "sjhal-ahm and "tzal-uhm" respectively. This alludes to the Arabic and Hebrew words for _peace_ , which are "salam" and "shalom".

 **Chapter 7 (Afterimage)**

 _Timekeeper:_

Five hours. Zero minutes. Two seconds = תוצאה (Totzaah) = Consequence

 **Chapter 8 (Sky and Earth)**

The Nasijii (Taliyah's tribe's dialect of Shuriman) sentences at beginning ("Ehr-taa! Ehr-taa! Ofs-olch ofs!") are derived from jumbled up Hebrew.( אתה ער! אתה ער! סוף כל סוף/ Ata er! Ata er! Sof chol sof!). Translated to English is: "You're awake! You're awake! At long last!"

Commercian is a term I made up which refers to the language Zaunites and Piltovians speak. I imagine there are "upper/formal" and "lower/informal" versions of the language. Taliyah was speaking fluently in the "upper" form, the ones that Piltovians mainly use among each other and with their customers, hence why Ekko was impressed when she was explaining how she found him.


	2. The First Rewind of the Day

**The First Rewind of the Day**

The breather pipes skirled to wake the Slums. They sang their cacophonic tune, like wounded metal lungs. Negating the flaring sapphire-colored light of my long-lamp, the chem-lights outside intensified into bright amber-gold, filtering through the Gray encasing the outdoor air, only to beam in between the slits of my dusted window curtains. Through a radio's grilled speaker, mellow late-night piano tones gradually faded out with tender steps. The timekeeper I'd set last night ticked like a metronome. Every hour, minute, and second rolled down its display, with ever increasing number.

Three hours. Six minutes. Zero seconds. And counting.

I groaned, the taste of soured saliva riding on my breath. _Too much time wasted_ _on sleep._ I moved my arms to prop myself up, waking them from their sleeping position, which inadvertently shoved crumpled paper, measuring gear, tools, and wires. My stomach sizzled. My throat felt drier than a worn out fume-pipe.

Madame Eddiefray's upside Piltovian accent sounded through the grille of a radio.

"Good morning, Zaun!"

Orchestral music blared in a bombastic entrance.

 _"Ugh..."_

"It's six bells before mid-day! The Rising Howl's a grinding, the Factorywood's a stirring, and productivity is high, _high_ up as always…"

Though my eyes resisted my efforts to pry them open, I searched for my stylo in the chem-lit blur, scanning among the screws, papers, and components. I felt its cylindrical body roll past my finger, approaching the end of my desk— which was way opposite the stylo-holder— only to tumble down at the other side. I caught it, setting it between my tired fingers, and gave it a few clicks. Like hatch grates, a row of tallies stretched end-to-end on a piece paper I had stamped on the radio.

Thirty-three days.

 _Not a second to waste._ I set the stylo down, stretched out with a waking yawn, and felt a breath leave me like shriveled dust out of a chute.

The can of waker-juice shifted slightly against my naked feet. I picked it up among the pile of its emptied brothers, just right beside the dexrofoam husks of delivered quick-bites, and took a good, long sip. The taste of hyper-sweetened, frizzy fluid burned down my throat, toward my belly, and into the back of my eyes.

 _Have to stay awake._

I searched for my micro-welder and found it resting beside my zoomer-lens. Its tiny engine roared in a quiet whir beneath the iron casing. _Shouldn't have left this plugged in._ I sighed as I pressed its button to check it. Highly concentrated ionflame erupted from its nozzle in a hovering a spike of energy; a perfect azure plume, controlled and confined by the rusted ring of the nozzle-tip. Though I burned through a lick of its reserved fuel, the tool remained functional.

 _Not for long._ I turned it off. _But t_ _he wear and tear won't matter once I'm done._

A mess of wires spilled out of the Zero Drive's metal casing, like a bronze cap linked to a thick brush of black tubes, which in turn connected the device to the Z-Augment, an amalgamate machine of components, microdrives, capacitators, limitators, and all other sorts of tech I'd been piecing together like a sculpture for remembrance day.

I placed my naked fingers on the glass capsule of the Z-Drive. Wisps of blue crystalline fragments swirled idly within the hourglass-shaped chamber... _Always good to see you still running._ Then, with a sigh, I moved my hand to the wirework and searched for the bolt I'd been welding to secure another capacitator before I fell asleep. _Too far in for a rewind…_ I pressed my micro-welder's button. Sparks hopped out of the juncture of metal and concentrated power, birthing a straight, perfectly aligned red-hot trail

Particles erupted, flaring out every second. Like tiny gunshots. Reminders.

Knocks boomed at my door. I jumped up, almost letting go of the micro-welder and slicing open all of my work. _Oh no, oh no._ I looked at my progress as frantic calculations of how to dismantle and hide this all raced in my mind, but before I can even notice the most obvious idea gleaming back at me from the Z-Drive's primer rod, the hinges burst open.

"We're back from upside!" Mom and dad said in rehearsed unison, with their mouths grinned and eyes squeezed, full of cheer. They wore the most well-heeled attire they could— mom with her belted gown, and dad with a layered garb and bowler hat— while stuffed bags were gripped in each of their hands. That meant dad had to kick the door open. "We got you—"

They stopped, and as the view settled in, their happy faces devolved into a mixture of surprise, awe, and confusion. Eyes wide at them and mouth agape like theirs, I reached for the Z-drive's first primer by instinct, the string stretching like a blue ribbon that'd excited the crystals inside.

They looked at the Z-Drive, the wires, the tools, the mess of cans, and emptied shells of quick-bite. I twisted the second primer, releasing the shards' time-tearing energy out of the casing, spewing out like a flux of cyanic tiles.

They looked straight into my eyes. I twisted the medallion-shaped activator attached to my right glove atop the Z-Drive.

And as dad's face turned red like the hazard lights of the Rising Howl and as mom reached her soft hands out to calm him down, he took in a chem-pipe's worth of a breath, but before the air he'd gathered could leave the ends of his teeth, the Z-Drive flashed, bringing me into its epicenter as the world shattered into a million neon pieces.

 _The first rewind of the day._ And in the chaos of a reversing reality, the first thought of this timeline blipped in my head. _Just had to be for them._

The breather pipes skirled to wake the Slums. Late-night radio rang a piano's mellow steps. The timekeeper ticked. Madame Eddiefray's voice trilled with orchestral accompaniment. _Good morning, Zaun!_

Three hours. Six minutes. Zero seconds. And counting.

 _Not a second to waste._

Like a sump rat drunk with dram caught in the light, I forced my body up despite all the grog and aridness half-way departed from my eyes. As I had guzzled the waker-juice, I had time to collect my thoughts and get that emergency energy going. _Today's the day they come back. Shouldn't have forgotten._ I crushed the emptied can, cast it aside to its pile, and huffed as I looked a the timekeeper. _At three hours, ten minutes, and thirty seconds, they'll be here. Gotta hide this all quick._

I hugged the Z-Drive and the Augment connected to it, stretching my arms like a cliff-shrike's wings, and pulled it out of the desktop. The weight pounded down at my chest, causing me to go ' _umpf'_ as I lowered the two connected machines down to the floor, and then pushed them to the feet of the curtains.

I slid the tech-mess to the far right side of the window, just beside the Flashbinder hidden further in the shade, and shut the curtains. The cobalt radiance of the long-lamp ruled the place once again.

 _Still ain't done._ I looked to my desk. Everything that had anything to do with my work had to go, so like brothballs in a pan, I picked the most 'out-of-place' looking microdrives, tools, and components, and stowed them in the crevice behind the skirts of my desk.

Nothing left but my stylo and wads of paper, the sound of Madame Eddiefray abusing the radio-waves with her upside accent, and the mounds of waker-juice and quick-bite husks gathered around my feet. And, with anticipation choking up static air in my lungs, I felt the faint throbs of my sleep-deprived heart and the sweet aftertaste of waker-juice riding on my next breath.

Only one thing left to do. I dragged open some drawers, stopping when I saw a titanic book slide to my pull.

 _API, CT, UHP, and UZ Compiled Admissions Reviewer Year '275-'276_.

I heard them knock, each slam coarse and flat like dad's hands. I lay the book flat on its back, stretched it open, put an elbow down my desktop, rested my cheek on my hand, and readied a waker-juice fueled smile for them.

And the hinges burst open at the ram of dad's foot.

"We're back from upside!" Their bags made crumpling sounds with their excited steps.

"We got you something from the Promenade!" Mom said, her enthusiasm lasting a bit longer than dad, whose expression gradually lifted out of his own excitement and into the gleams of waker-juice coming from the pile of cans and the tiny drool out of my lips.

"Oh." He said with a smile, then he put his bags down and set his eyes to the book sprawled open atop an 'academic' mess of paperwork. "Been working hard at your admissions haven't you?"

"Nothing less, dad." I said, confidence riding on a morning huskiness. "I made good use of my time."

And his face turned a faint pink, not with the angered curiosity that I'd seen in a different timeline, but with a proud glee. "Hah, hah! My boy!"

"But look at this room!" Mom came inside. Something in me twisted and stayed perfectly still as she sauntered to the curtains and stretched them wide open until she seemed to hug the view of the stacking houses of the Slums dwelling in the chemlit Grey. I pulled my eyes away from the reentering chem-light and fixed my look to the space by her feet. What little curtain shade left had just barely concealed the metal body of the Z-Drive. She put her hands to her hips and nodded. "There we go. Can't be looking like a shadow hare in a crawl-hatch in here, can you?"

"Oh please, dear, let him work the way he wants."

And she rolled her eyes as she came to the center of the room, and stopped when she noticed my accumulated piles of 'sustenance'.

"You can listen to your dad, but you should never sacrifice too much sleep!" And she ruffled my hair with a smile, embraced me, and kissed my cheek before meeting my eyes.

"My little genius." And she gave me the look, the tender, warming, heart-melting look that came from her like wind clearing the Gray whenever she said that name. I hadn't seen a smile in a while, but now it was there on mom's aging compassionate face, darkly toned like mine, smooth with happiness like dad's. I couldn't seem to look back. "You did very well to keep the other room tidy for a month, but it's time you rest."

"You'll need it to enjoy all the goodies we got! Come to think of it, I carried more than I had to over here..." Dad said, before stepping out of the room. "Oh, I can't wait to tell you all about the trip."

Then, turning from the door, mom looked at back at me. "Your dad and I's so excited to see you, we hadn't even time to take off our shoes." She laughed, and my lips gently curled, and faded, and with it, her smile faded too. "Something wrong, dear? Your eyes are drooping black with exhaustion. You didn't overwork yourself too much now, did you?"

"No, mom, I'm fine." I said. Then there was a pause. The air between us grew heavier. She waited for me to say it. I wanted to tell her. I could just rewind if the words didn't mean right, but I already had a reason stashed away; a reason I'd made to distract her and dad, to keep me away from letting them know in even a single timeline.

"I'm just... anxious is all. Admissions are in two weeks but I've been preparing for a month."

And she sighed and her smiled returned. "This is your home, not the Factorywood." And she kissed my forehead and rubbed my back as she brought me close. Never mind that I stunk, that I hadn't brushed, and that I didn't feel like having a heart-to-heart, mom did what she'd always done when something didn't look right. But I couldn't tell her why I'd been like this. So what she did, stayed incomplete.

"Work is right if it lessens the future''s burden," she said, "but when you need to rest, rest, okay?"

"Alright, mom." I muttered, then my eyes wandered to my feet.

"I'm so sorry we couldn't bring you to the factory's raffle trip."

I sighed. "I still don't understand the rule of getting to go with you guys _only_ if I worked in the factory." I said, something she'd heard before. "That ain't fair."

"Well, that's how it goes.…", with lowered eyes, she shook her head, "On the bright side, we don't have to pay rent for another month and we did all we could to get you souvenirs, like we promised." Then her voice softened. "A whole month's rest upside is something. We're quite lucky to be the first ones to go since the raffle system's been put in place. I still can't believe Lord Tafton would give us so much." She paused. "I just wish you could've been there with us."

"It's okay, mom, really, it's okay. Least I studied..."

"We don't have to ask to know you did." She smiled as she brushed my hair. "I'm proud."

Not long, dad's footsteps came through the door, and with that she stood. He brought with him a small sack, fat with weight, and gave it to me with a smile. Between my fingers, the thin, soft, mid-quality fabric spelled _Promenade_ in gilded letters. No doubt mom and dad will be using this for more than one occasion, even though for the Pilties, it was meant to be disposable.

"Everything inside is just for you." Dad said.

And before I took out their first gift, I met their smiles and saw how their eyes glimmered with a joy so unlike them.

"Come on, open it." Mom said.

"And don't worry, we didn't swipe that from the Black Lane." Dad laughed.

I wanted to tell them that they shouldn't have, that the trip was meant for them, that I didn't ask, or that I could've gotten these myself. I wanted to tell them about what had happened, about my mistake, about what I had done, and what I had been doing to fix it.

But their smiles had so much hope, so much enthusiasm, and a regretful part of me grew twice when I realized that I had thought of negating all that they felt for me now. _Faces more energetic than in their name days,_ I thought, _and happier smiles..._

I couldn't help it. _From them, just for me_. That was all I needed to know. So I smiled, and kept it for a while, and the lightness they carried found its way to me, even for only a moment.

I brought the items out one-by-one, placing them atop my desk. Each time I had pulled something out, they would say something and laugh, and I laughed too, and with every laugh, I had felt a gathering beneath my eyes. They saw it, maybe even felt it too, but they kept talking, smiling, yet I couldn't look at them

Boxes of sweetbread squares, a freshly tailored long-sleeved shirt and trousers to go with, a can of _Jetstream_ hair wax, a hard-bound book titled _Hextech: The Brink of a New Epoch_ , and a brass medal tied to a string which I then wore around my neck.

At its center, rested a blue gem, and at the back, words were etched: _No better a home than in the arms of family._

"It's not even my name day. You really shouldn't have—"

"Do all these look familiar?" Dad interrupted.

"Perhaps you missed something, dear. There's one more thing inside."

Somehow I already knew what it was. I reached in. A piece of paper, lightly crumpled and brown with age. My handwriting.

 _1\. Sweetbread. Tons of it.  
_ 2. _A shirt.  
_ _3\. Hair wax.  
_ _4\. A book. Maybe something about hextech? Any book will do.  
_ _5\. A home in the Entrasol._

"It's my old bucket list." I said. "I hadn't even ridden the Howl yet when I wrote this. You actually… kept it? " Then I looked at them through the blurring of my eyes. They answered in smiles. "Wow…" I wiped my eye, "that's… amazing." Then I laughed.

"Sorry we couldn't keep the last one to the letter." Dad said, "but we did have that coin necklace engraved. That should be enough."

"Are you alright, dear?" Mom said.

Everything was more than enough.

Then I had them tight in my arms, and every bit of me warmed, lifted, and brightened. And, in that moment, embraced in the their necks scented with perfumes, nothing seemed to bother me; not the frustrations over my progress, the coming admissions, or the ticking timekeeper.

"I love you guys."

And the Z-Drive flashed and every little detail repeated, as if reality was unraveling a perfect memory. And I there was again, pulling out their gifts, seeing them smile, and hearing them laugh. _Even just for a moment._ I was back in their arms, and I would be for a dozen instances in time, rewinding a dozen embraces and a dozen teardrops.

But there came a time when the tears I shed stopped rewinding, and the timekeeper ticked louder than anything in the room.

 _Not a second to waste._

"I love you guys."

The Z-Drive stopped flashing.


	3. Withdrawal

**Withdrawal**

Three hours. Forty-five minutes. And the seconds were turning.

I had stowed away the gifts, except for the coin necklace, which was safe around my neck, and a single box of sweetbread squares, now opened on my desk. The whole time, I'd been pacing around my room, sometimes sitting and staring at the timekeeper, which had remained like a paperweight on the scattered notes.

 _I feel so tired._

The words sounded in my head, an echo from a memory. But I kept pacing, thinking if I should tell them, or if I should take mom's advice and rest. The radio had been left on. Music faded out and Madame Eddiefray's voice floated in like routine.

"... the recent ethics case involving Dr. Priggs still continues to shake both Zaun and Piltover to its very core. Arbitrators from the Pinnacle Court have been interrogating and auditing him tirelessly over his employment of non-consented labor, drawn from young Zaunites…"

Non-consented labor. Should've just said slavery.

"... have temporarily frozen Priggs Industries' operations for over a month as orderkeepers and scribes continue to investigate the true breadth of Dr. Prigg's alleged folly. Many firms drawing labor from Zaun have responded to Prigg's alleged breach of ethics by reassessing working conditions and ameliorating worker morale…"

 _"I still can't believe Lord Tafton would give us so much."_

I sighed, turned the radio off, and unplugged it. All that was left, was the timekeeper's monotonous sound. I figured dad might've wanted to listen to the radio, so I coiled the plug wire and brought the thing with me as I got out of my room.

"Dad, here's the, radi- oh…"

Mom and dad sat together in separate chairs by the door; they had their arms crossed, lifting gently to the push of their chests, with mom having fallen asleep on dad's shoulder. They hadn't changed their clothes, and the baggages and handlebags they've brought home remained forgotten on the ground, with some resting on the only table in the room and on the tiny kitchen counter

 _Looking like they just came home from Tafton's factory, only that they're wearing different clothes_. I didn't smile seeing them like this. The chem-light from my room slipped through the door I left ajar and penetrated the darkness. _Didn't even turn on the lights_.

I left the radio on the table, beside two other bags from the Promenade. _I can't sumping stand it. They only get to be this happy when a Piltie says so._ The words rolled into a huff. I peered into one of the bags they left. Shoeboxes peeked back at me. I looked at the others; utensils, hygienics, perfume, clothes, treats... _Bought those all upside in Piltover, only to bring them back to Zaun..._

Dad snored. I looked at him. The smile he'd given me hadn't left; a faint angle on his lips, so gently aligned with mom's. But my eyes turned down, to all these bags, and I wondered the real reason why they smiled today.

I turned for my room and shut the door behind me. _Shouldn't be thinking about that after all they've given me._

The waker-juice had stopped jogging under my skin, and so the first thing my eyes turned to was my bed, waiting for me like an old friend. I crashed there, my back to the sheets, and stared at the ceiling. The timekeeper hadn't stopped, each tick a reminder, a plea for me not to rest, but the weight of my eyes defied them each time.

 _When they wake up, they'll be wearing their uniforms. Tomorrow, they'll ride the Howl, head off to Factorywood, and be back to sorting a line of Tafton tools..._

 _"We're quite lucky to be the first ones to go…"_

"Pilties decide when we can smile." I said to nobody but myself. "Luck isn't going to change who we are"

 _Nor can it stop the timekeeper..._

 **III**

"Ekko."

Hands shook my shoulders. I woke, my eyes red and pulsating, and there loomed a silhouette standing by my bed. As my vision cleared, I realized who it was from a yellow kerchief tied around her shoulder and the green dye of her braided hair.

"Phola?" I said.

"Get up, you sleepy cog." Her voice hissed, urgent, through her half-formed smirk.

I pulled myself up. "What're you—" then I paused.

Seemed like the whole sumping gang was inside my room; their patched clothes, goggles, gloved hands, wet boots, and tied kerchiefs were present in almost every corner. Dury and Weasel sat on the windowsill; Quiver crossed her arms above my chair's headrest, and Kip and Jon-jon rested by a wall.

"Hi, Eks."

"Yo, Eks."

"Sorry, we had to get in without telling ya..."

I looked at Phola. She was twirling a braid of her green hair, visibly embarrassed. She wanted to tell me something, but I first needed to know why she stuffed six guys inside my room.

"Why'd you bring them all?" I said, my voice creaky like a rusted nut turning to a wrench. She didn't answer. The others looked at me, their eyes floating down and away from the bed and into the shadows far from it. The texture of the air grew thicker, not just because of the Gray seeping in from the outside, but because of the quiet taking over the room.

I noticed the bandage wrapped around Quiver's pale arms and a new gauze stamp on Kip's olive face. Weasel took his hat off and placed it against his chest, revealing fresh white bands wrapped around his scalp. Phola sighed after she had taken a step away from me. She was gently rubbing an arm with a hand.

Something wasn't right.

"Where's Lurk?"

And their eyes sunk even further as my mine stretched open.

Quiver spoke, her husky voice cutting the silence in two. "He kept a door shut before the vigis could get us. Told us to go. We tried to..."

Every word tore a fiber out of my chest. They didn't have to say any more. I understood, and as I did, my face contorted and I slid hands over my face. Quiver didn't go on.

Phola sat beside me and tried to pat me, comfort me, but I pushed her arms away. "I'm sorry, Eks. We didn't realize that the 'nauts were on to us now… If I knew-"

"Don't be sumping sorry." I snapped. "Don't all of you be sorry." They stared. "It's all my fault…. All my fault..." Then I stayed there, looking at the floor, until the urge to rewind came but I dispelled the thought. It wasn't worth it. Neither the gang nor Phola spoke. They quietly agreed with me.

I looked at Phola. Eyes that pitied me couldn't seem to look back. "Does the rest of the gang know?" I said.

"No, but we'll tell them soon."

"Tell them. Make sure to. And tell his mom." I said. "Tell _Bradley's_ mom." The sound of Lurk's real name stirred deep breaths.

"Alright…"

I couldn't take it. Another face in the walls. As if everything before him was not enough. It didn't matter. The gang watched silently, while some looked to the door… Nobody came through.

I caught the timekeeper's face in a glance.

Four hours. Five minutes. And the seconds were turning.

 _Not a second to waste._

"The zolt-heart." I turned to Phola. "Did you get it?"

She nudged her head at Jon-jon. He let a hand in his pocket and brought out a metal sphere glowing bright red at its poles. He came forward and, with eyes turned away, he gave it to me. "Here."

A scarlet orb within a spherical metal chamber twirled in infinite motion, generating bursts of light in every direction and a machinarium district's worth of energy every second. I held it in my hand and brought it close that I could see the tiny flecks of crystalline residue, the shriveled vestiges of its once whole form.

"Enough to power all of Factorywood... " I muttered. "The plotting, the searching,, and the heists upside to get even just the schematics… and the blood spilled…"

"The Pilties and their viginaut hounds'll be looking all over for that..." Phola said.

"I know. Won't matter once I'm done."

I stood, came to my desk, and placed it the zolt-heart there, right at the middle of my reviewer, like a marble. With her head down, Quiver had gotten up and had retreated to the bedside with Phola. I felt the weight of all their eyes as I turned to look at all of them.

None of them could even glance at me, so I felt the thanks that I'd wanted to say fade down into my throat.

"I should've…" I began. "I should've gone with you guys. I'll fix this mess. I promise you all. I'll rewind, make things whole again, bring them back..."

Nobody looked, nobody except Phola, whose eyes were dark to me. "You mean bring Ajuna back."

"I ain't doing this just for him." I said to her.

"Don't give us that sump-crap." She said. "What about Xerk, Bambam, and Hamchest, huh? What about Quiver's sister, Ophelia? Will you save them too? Why only now, Ekko? Why only now that _Ajuna's_ gone?!"

"Because Ajuna was the last straw!" I shouted, not caring that my parents might hear. "You know how many times I saw him die in that gutter? Do you know how many times I see _you_ , see _all of you die_?"

They fell silent.

"I can change things. I can stop them from dying; make things right. If you just give me enough time to supercharge the drive, I can fix this. They'll be back with us, and we'll never have to paint their faces on the wall. Once I'm done, we'll forget this timeline ever happened."

But none of that moved them. The resentment in Phola's eyes gleamed through in a soft, withdrawing light. I knew I hadn't convinced her, but maybe out of anger or out pity, she didn't argue, didn't say another word but the unspoken fade of her respect.

I looked away from her to meet the eyes of everyone else, but they retreated from me, sinking into the corners of my room. I could never know if they agreed with me or not.

Steps thudded from the other side, until, wiping his face squeezed in disturbed slumber, dad marched in the room. "What in Janna's name is—", and he immediately stopped when the necks of every single person with me turned to him. Kerchiefs, boots, and patchy clothes… Dad knew what all those meant and it reddened his face like billowing chem-flame. He looked at me, and to everyone else, who had all begun to get up as if standing to both respect and fear his presence.

The gang shot glances my way, knowing well what this meant, but before I dashed for the Z-Drive, I caught Phola's eyes; and all the anger she gave, had molded into silent melancholy. She had more to say, but couldn't, and hoped she could in the echoing timeline.

She won't have to.

A cyanic glow split the world apart.

I stood before them. I pushed the thanks I wanted to say back inside me.

Not an eye met. Not a lip moved. I turned back to my desk and pulled out all the tools and parts I'd hidden, the sound of clunking and thudding awkwardly telling the gang that I'd ignored them. They watched me, silent, not knowing what to say or choosing not to say something. It didn't matter. Whatever bad heart they've got for me and the cost it took to get this far, won't be important at the end of this all, and it was near. The timekeeper won't have to tick anymore.

Soon, I had the Z-Drive and the Z-Augment in my arms and, shoving away the box of sweetbread squares on my desk, I set both of them down, smothering the opened flap of my admissions reviewer beneath it. Just right beside the zolt-heart. I sat on my chair, adjusted it forward, and looked for my micro-welder, and when I found it, I got back to reinforcing a capacitator's joints. The sound of sparks shooting out in short-lived wisps filled the quiet between me and the gang.

"We'll go now, Eks." Phola said, her voice low but gritting. "I hope that damned Piltie ball is worth Lurk's life. If you've any sanity left, help us paint his face on the wall."

 _We won't have to once I'm done._ I didn't say anything.

"Come on, guys. We've done our part. Let's leave him be." And they pulled themselves up, heading for the window. I felt Kip's small feet stop by me. I didn't turn to him. I focused on the sparks, like tiny gunshots. Reminders.

"You'll bring him back, won't you?" He said.

Unconsciously, I nodded.

"Will you bring all of them back?"

The answer stayed behind my lips. _All of them, until I've wiped our block in Memorial Wall clean, o_ _nce I'm done._

Phola called for Kip, and before he went, he gave me a pat on the shoulder,

"He was my best friend too. It's not your fault, Eks… It never is."

The words were lost on me. I stopped listening. I needed to concentrate. The timekeeper kept on going. I didn't want to stop it. I can't rest. Like the ticking, I must keep going, until the numbers turn back, then I won't have to set the timekeeper.

And no Zaunite child will have to die by a Piltovian's gun.

And he won't have to die.

And it won't have to be my fault.

Once I'm done.


	4. Unwound

**Unwound**

" _What'd you got there, Ekko?"_

He used to love saying that. I used to open the windows. He used to watch me work. Used to.

Not for long.

The metal surface of the zolt-heart told a cold story through my fingertips, one of secrets and countless hours of an intricate process, one that involved the compression and containment of a hextech crystal's total energy. Cradled within was the combined effort of an entire academy's worth of literature, an army of machines and instruments, and one daring genius who bolted the other two together. I had no idea what this was originally intended for, not even the schematics hinted it, but they were enough for me to figure out how to build the Z-Augment. I placed it beside my desk. It watched me like a burning eye. I looked to the Augment and the drive tethered to it. Thoughts gathered. Papers sifted. My stylo scribbled. Hours started to run.

" _You never give up, Eks." He smiled. "You never get tired of rewinding. How do you do that?"_

I began fitting the zolt-heart into the augment. I took measures. I made adjustments under the blue light of my long-lamp. The analysis gear I had specifically made to produce readings on both the zolt-heart and the Z-Drive flashed with data. Wires fitted, tools rattled, data tests were run, and the timekeeper ticked. I had to be sure. Blood-made effort could not be wasted now. Hours went by.

" _Why do you always work like you're running out of time, Ekko?"_

The black wires coursing into the Z-Drive hummed. The power of the z-heart's crimson energy flowed through, turning into ruby the black wires of the augment. I smiled the first real smile I had in a month. True progress was before me. The calculations I made, the guesswork I'd engineered, and the apparatuses I'd designed _just for this moment_ finally resulted into _something_. The energy of the zolt-heart surged from the wires and into the Z-Drive's cyanic chamber like red ink swirling into a blue solution.

" _You're always smiling, always solving problems, always finding something new, and always there for others. Someday, I want to do the things you do, Ekko, be someone like you."_

My smile faded. Something wasn't right. The augment's limitator glowed from green to orange. They were functioning right, coordinating with the capacitators to prevent the crystals inside from overworking, but they did so too soon. I had needed control. I lost it. I had to move quickly. I pulled the first primer rod, and from orange, the limitators flashed red, and so did the heart of the Z-Drive.

" _You sure you want to be like me, Aj?" I ruffled his hair, smiling. "Alright. Go get us some food, and I'll tell you how the Z-Drive works."_

The red light overpowered the cobalt-blue of the long-lamp.

 _He didn't return after an hour. I looked for him. I found him lying on the gutter. A dozen times. Until I got to him in time._

The Z-drive's glass chamber cracked. Its passive hum boomed into a bellowing roar. I had no time to wonder if that woke mom and dad up. I reached a hand to twist the second primer, but I stayed still. If I activated this primer, all the supercharged energy would let loose in this room. _But that's exactly my plan._ The hinges of my door burst open. This time dad wasn't alone. Through the rushing sound of a million storm's worth of energy, I couldn't hear the words mouthed by their lips.

 _I had him in my arms. I heard his final breaths. More than twice. "I feel so tired, Ekko. I just want to go to sleep."_

I saw their eyes, gazing as if they stood before the feet of a god. I saw wonder. I saw confusion. I saw fear.

"I'm sorry, mom. Forgive me, dad."

My fingers clutched at the coin laced around my neck, their final gift.

The Z-Drive's chamber cracked as the pure hextech essence threatened to detonate out of the casing. I didn't have to unscrew the second primer. Crimson beams began to flash through the wounds of the breaking glass. I placed the back of my right glove against my lips. The third and final primer attached to it was hard against the edges of my teeth.

" _It's okay. Go to sleep. When you wake up, everything will be okay..."_

With a bite to the cold metal, I twisted the final primer.

Glass shattered. Reality shattered. Time shattered. My screams distorted inward my warping conscience and toward a rift of nothingness.

Only one thing remained whole.

A memory, the after-image of what I had last seen.

The timekeeper. I no longer heard it ticking.

Nine hours. Three minutes. Five seconds.

If this works, the timekeeper wouldn't be where I first set it. I would be in my room, the day he visited me one last _time_. I would have my chance. I would be there to stop myself. All this chaos would matter no more.

But if it doesn't…

 _When you wake up, everything will be okay..._


	5. Tears Beneath I

**Tears Beneath I**

The stones wept.

Once, the earthen veins beneath flowed alongside the harmony of seas and rivers, flowing to sing new melodies for the waters' dance of seasons. By the whirls of their arms, rain trickled, and by the sway of their feet, the underflow dribbled. For such dances, the Great Weaver would prepare skirts and raiments of stone. Upon her loom, she would weft and warp the fibres of earth, overlapping them among one another to birth caverns and aquifers upon the earthen textile. Then, with the help of the water, the Great Weaver would thread stitches to mend these fibres, forming a new layer upon Her earthly tapestry for the seasonal waters to wear. With these garments, the waters would go on to adorn embroideries of jade and aquamarine to the barren fabric of the dunescape.

But something lofty and indomitable, something unnatural and powerful, untied Her fibres, with beak and talon, a falcon, tearing at Her loomed threads to expose the waters beneath, so that they may be commanded away from the melodious cycle of their temporal dance for them to converge toward a single, absolute source.

"Shurima."

From my fist, sand trickled down to the sun-yellowed stone by my booted toes. The more that I roamed this land and pulled from the earth deep below, the more that I unraveled truth sparkling within the earth's tears. The waters moved from their seasonal veins embedded within the bedrock and towards crooked scars, _arteries,_ untapped for generations. _Like a hemorrhage towards the Mother of Life ...Oh, Great Weaver, this cannot be true. Grant me even a single sign that The Fallen One has not returned._

But she had already sent plenty of signs, sewn them into memories of lightning, fire, and burning faces; hemming them into the night-black countenance of a jackal, the eyes of azure, and the heeded words of warning spoken as skyfires engulfed the sun-baked bricks and the stranger spirits of a city reborn. Sand, stone, and flesh ripped asunder, beneath the smothering blue-fires of heaven;beneath, where mortarless masonry crumbled, where tents smoldered, where faces faded, where woven stone protected...

I poured the grains down to the rugged rock below me. The sands streamed like a cascade flowing from the calloused creases of my palm's olive skin, to reveal pebbles, dark from water, hidden within the spilling powder. They stopped in their fall. They floated inches above the ground. Traceless outlines guided my fingers' twirling, each tug and pluck as soft as stray threads to a breezing wind. I kept the stones tied to the invisible tether I'd woven, twining them together, suspending them from joining the mound of sand.

Water dripped from the pebbles, sunlight glimmering them like crystals of blue. Tears.

"The wounded earth only tells me of discord…"

I brought the stones close to one another, holding them against a visiting wind, as if persuading them to huddle and embrace in their mourning so that they may feel better. _Balance, little sparrow._ But though they moved closer, the stones refused to float parallel; they trembled in my hold, appearing to fear the cords I'd woven, appearing to fear me. _Align them like threads to a loom. Perfectly in row._ I concentrated. I imagined fine Ionian silks of emerald and cherry blossom bringing them together. But each time the fabrics closed, they tore apart, as did the spaces between the stones.

They fell to the ground. They joined the sands. I sighed. "The smallest patches of embroidery are the hardest to get right."I looked up to the sky. The sun flared in a golden radiance, a crown of the desert taking all that was beyond and beneath its aurel brilliance, yet it concealed who I was looking for. I squinted for her. I knew she was there, listening, and I turned to the stone, that I may speak to the making in lieu of the maker.

"Great Weaver, is the turmoil within the earth or within its weaver?"

I waited for an answer, but only felt winds trace beneath the fabric of my robe; the winds of a land newly returned to; embracing my skin, cooling the sweat of travel, and repelling the soul-rending heat. Refreshing. Only because I alone tasted it. Then it soured.

So quiet were the dunes that I heard the grains of sand slide like bonedust to the breeze. The sands shift above the earth, their weight changing upon the bedrock, an almost perfect mimic to the dance of sea tides, if not for the sun, not the moon, as its guide. Naked stone would soon cease to be a common sight. As the dunes retract for the cities and ascend for the wastes, the patches of bare earth were fated to become as rare as oases, while sunken walls emerge in desolate plains and rivers of life overflow in droughted valleys.

 _Time is short for petty answers. I have to keep moving. I must follow the waters' grief._

I walked for my pack, a brown bulb sagging near the fringe where sand and bare rock met. I untied the braided knot of its wrinkled neck and pulled it open. The flax pouches of my supplies of hard eka'sul cheese, cured meats, and dry oats gathered in snug huddles among one another atop a folded stack of clothes; and beside that stack, huddled another group of pouches, fat with foreign pebbles, safe within fabrics woven from the native fibres of lands beyond the sea.

All of the pouches were full, save for one.

I remembered the pebbles I tried to balance, how they were small enough to fit into this last one, and I pictured the distance left before my tired travelling feet finally set down for true rest. I brought that empty pouch out, and so long was I busy filling the other pouches, so long have I not held this particular pouch in my hands, that I inspected its craft as if to recall how it found its way in my pack.

The stitches mending the tan goatskin told of no shaking hand or imprecise needle. Like people holding arm in arm, the strings were threaded in 'X's of indigo. Mother's handiwork. She wove it from the flanks of one of father's eka'sul, the desert goats of Shurima, animals that followed close to you if you sung with the tune of a happy heart, that sharpened their scimitar horns upon the rock like whetstone, that wagged their brush-like tails every now and then as they would bend down to eat anything from your hands; the same animals that I used to sing to, used to caress, and used to herd by my father's side _._

And when the memories came, so did a stare to this last pouch, a lump of empty goatskin in my hand. _Should I fill this now?_ I was so close, so near to the heart of my journey, that I could almost hear it match the beating of mine, but that's all it was. I wasn't there yet.

 _No. I will only fill this pouch once I return._

The pebbles by our gathered feet once we embrace will witness the glitters of our tears, the cracks of our sobs, the sound of our native tongues, and the warmth of our arms. Those will be the stones, not for a foreign land where I crossed, not for the golden sands of Shurima, but for the people of weaving hands and shepherding feet, people who tread by the stones of distant foothills and city walls, the same people whom I once saw walking into a horizon touched by the copper glow of a rising sun unraveling the western darkness. I stifled the thought of filling this pouch, and in its place stood a memory, the sound of my mother's fingers plucking, needle threading, and lips humming, like instruments to her quiet song of creation…

I slipped the empty pouch back inside.

 _Once I return…_

I slung my pack on. The weight of its contents shook. The skins tied to it dangled. I could feel its flax-threaded lints scrape against the fabric of my robe as I entered my arm into its sling, leaving it to hang by my left shoulder. The waters carved epitaphs of mourning that stretched on and on into the parchment of the horizon. I drew a breath.

 _Here ends rest. Here begins a new trek. There is not a day to waste._

I pressed a heel down to the jutted a slab, a board wedged at its head like a shard no smaller than twice my body plied from the earth. One booted foot climbed atop it, laying it against the bare stone, and the next followed, keeping still behind the heel of the other. I crouched; the slab wiggled like stiff rope to my weight, and so I held at its grooved sides as I took a breath. _I will not fall this time. The dunes are fabric. The stones, my shear._ Threads tied. Fingers wove. The slab moved forward like a boat pushed from dry land to shallow water . Yet I grasped its flanks, my fingers pressing unto its ridges, with my knees lowered down. The slab rent out of the patch of earth, crossed the border of rock and sand, and then sent ripples that split golden powders into dust….

 _The bird's trust is not in the branch beneath her..._

Finger by finger, I let go. _I have done this before. I can do it again._ A breath clenched into the wind, released, lifting my chest, its rise bringing with it the standing of my knees. My hands left the touch of stone, leaving only the touch of their threads wrapped around my fingers. The stones bound into the lattice of my sleeves' wing-like ends chattered like chimes. My arms embraced the wind of a world coming towards me, splitting apart at the wedge of my slab, sending sharp clouds of dust in its earth-rending trail. As I tasted air, the tightening of my lips gave into its sweetness. It sipped the dew of the air in a smile, and in seconds, devoured them in laughter. The images of rising sands, of azure lightning, of cold blue eyes, of night-black jackalskin, and of burning faces were cast out the fluttering hazel locks of my hair, and into the dust behind me, leaving only one prospect in my mind, one that I had been searching for, one that I approached with a speed that crushed sand and liberated stone: a loose thread reunited with its tapestry.

In this rush, I could only hear a single sentence like a mantra through the surge of roaring desert wind.

 _Faster until the stone sews tales in the wind!_

And in silence of dune spirits, I howled in jumping grins, in teeth seeping air, and in eyes conquering the horizon. I passed families and tribes of dunes, climbing atop them in arcs of stone, like waves rushing at the rending bow of my slab's surf. With every arc, the sky came toward me as if to be one with my eyes, and in this moment, only the Sun, the Sky, the Weaver, and Her stone rising out of the bedrock to carry me heavenward were my witnesses. The surging in my ears, the skins tied to my pack fluttering to the wind, the sands crushing at my speed, and the world unraveling before me like an endless curtain, these brought a weightlessness as scarce as wild desert flowers, but now, in the enormous expanse of the sands and in the rush of momentum, it was as plentiful as the grains. Sun may set, I would not even bother to notice its fall or rise, not while I rived, with stone and laughter, the sands, the air, and the shadows behind me.

Ahead my trail, a mother of dunes awaited me in the distance. A crown among caps, an obstacle to my path, the dune challenged my smile. It grew. With motions like uncloaking a million fibres, I thrust the slab forward by the will of my hands; ridges of stone rising in my trail, braiding among each other into granite hanks, to hold and combine like hands upon each other's wrist, so that I may be lifted upwards.

To any soul in my path, I appeared an enraged ralsiji billowing the sands with my horns of earthen fury. The dune waited for me like a grass for the trampling of my hooves, and with all my will, I thrust my arms as if draping all of the land in a sailcloth that spanned the stars.

The stones in my wake rushed out of the bedrock, no longer braiding, but conjoining like a hundred ropes raveling skyward, carrying me in their erratic climb that seemed to sunder both earth and atmosphere every second. The face of a mountain emerged beneath my feet, crushing all before it like the quaking blades of a granite titan. The dune dissipated, a nuisance to the power I had brought, grinding sand to dust and scattering them into the wayward winds of the wastes. I could almost taste the flavor of the sky, with all the earth bringing me towards it, closer, and closer, until I could look beyond the blanket of the sun-scorched horizon and the plains bowing before its majesty _... Or bowing to me…_

A finger of earth stood far into the horizon, and there, at its tip, flashed a red glow. First, I squinted, thinking it a slip of my imagination, but then the light grew into the shape of an all-encompassing orb, whipping sands at its fringes, wounding the cobalt skin of the sky into crimson flesh. It caught my stare, until the flash darkened into hues of dried blood, decaying into the countenance of the sapphire distance.

And in that instant, I felt pulled from a trance, a vessel torn from a possessing spirit, eyes woken from a dream, a sparrow stalled in her flight… The lack of movement tightened pangs of stillness in my chest. The height I'd climbed compressed the spaces of my skin; the joy I'd drunk melted down the ends of my lips, and all the stones I had woken from the ground screamed of a weight impossible to bear. In interrupted balance, the slab beneath me rocked; forward, backward, then forward, backward. My knees wiggled, a palm rod strummed by a dragon's claw. My hair danced to no wind. The threads that coiled around my fingers unwound, falling like coils of wisps fraying in the dead air.

The weaving stopped.

All control escaped me, bundled cords of a loom snapped from a single cut. Gravity commanded where I could not. The slab tipped downward and plunged. I screamed. I lost balance; my body slid to the empty space in front of me; my arms flailed; and my legs kicked for a hint of ground.

Air grappled my feet.

In this instant, everything I had thrown behind, portalled out from the deep-blue blankness of the sky and the blinding radiance of the sun; visions of flesh-tearing lightning, of golden sands above weeping stone, and of faces and tapestries burning into fire, turning interwoven threads of a hundred colors into ash.

The monument I had heaved from the earth looked down upon me, disappointed that I could not control them, and thus leaving me to fall in its shadow. Above it, there watched the sun, with eyes of royal gold pitying that I had failed to challenge its height, and the sky, with eyes of pure azure mocking that I had risen so close its level, only to fall…

 _Great Weaver this cannot be the end!_

I pulled at unseen seams, groping for what stray threads I could in between a rushing plunge and impending ground. Within messes of tangled tethers, my fingers grasped and heaved bundles of tangled threads. A rod of earth shot out of the cliff, smacking solid pain into my side, yet delaying my descent. I tumbled, only to fall again, but then another rod jutted out, catching me by my pack, further lightening the fall. With clenched teeth, I grasped at a bush of fibre, where the connections of a hundred stones tugged at the cords, and pulled the weight of boulders.

So many were the threads that the stones abandoned their whole forms and congealed into clumps of sediments, which gathered at the foot of the mountain like a mesh to catch me. I thudded into their earthly cushion through my side, and, liken to a tongue lashing out, they rolled my body into the sands, pack and face taking turns to meet the dirt, until my momentum faded into the nestle of the dunes.

All movement ceased.

I coughed.

I spat out grains.

I felt my pained limbs moving dust as I struggled to stand.

The flesh of my palms seared through the callouses. Small tears on my coat's amber-brown sleeves permitted the sun to touch the scratches beneath. Dust filmed the faded lavender of my tunic and a strand of loose threads hung from the sleeves around my wrist. The slab I had ridden was thrust into the sand not far from where I fell.

The combined weight of my pack, pains within my bones, and shock beneath my skin sparked grunts as I pulled myself up, and alleviated these weights in what way I could: I let my pack slide down my shoulders; my hands clasped at striking aches in my arms, and my eyes regained clarity from the rush of the moment.

 _Danger comes when your attention is divided._

I gritted my teeth. I had paid the price for forgetting.

A shadow smothered the sands around me.

There stood my mountain: enormous hanks of earth bracing into one another, concocting like a net of cords and arcs twisting in and out of another into the firmament above, as if to stand against sun and sky. Waters from below dripped from their earthen muscle. Tears. My eyes could not avert from the might of its earthen cloth, nor could I draw the next breath from the winds it barricaded. _What have I created?_ My fists clenched, and cuts pressed onto another, wringing pain. _This is of my weaving…_ I opened my hands before my eyes. Scarlet ribbons streaked beneath the callouses. Reminders. _This is of my weaving_ …

 _The pain I feel… Will it yet again be the pain of others?_ The immense fabric of rock blotted both sun and sky, and before it, I felt Her, but I did not welcome the sight, and only faced a grievous urge to leave its presence, yet I whispered, as if the stone could hear me and bring the thread of my message to Her.

 _Great Weaver, what is the true purpose of my power?_

And the stones cracked, rumbled, and untwisted as they flaked and splintered into breaths of fine dust, carried by wandering winds, like departing wisps that unraveled the threads of the mountain. I stood once again beneath the wings of sky and sun, and so plentiful was the dust of fading stone, that they flowed in ethereal curtains, distorting both azure and gold above, like a blurring screen of seawater, a vision of a drowning spirit...

 _"That power of yours was meant to destroy."_

I turned away from my making.

A sight caught me. My headpiece, forced from my scalp, had tumbled in the sand, its luster dimmed through a coat of dust. I picked it up. Round-edged golden petals radiated from a core of silver. Father, with the sweat of his brow, sought its parts and fashioned its pieces together, and mother, with weeping eyes, crowned it upon me before I left.

" _Like your name, it means two things"._

Ta'liyah, the wild Icathian flowers that grew on the rugged foothills of my homeland.  
Taliyah, the union of Yannah and Tal, mother and father, whose words I last heard echoing into the rising sun. Warm were the tears beneath my fingertips, wiping the silver ribbons down mother's cheek that day; warm was father's thumb wiping away mine.

With my robe's sleeve, I wiped off the sands staining the metal, before turning the headpiece and fastening its clip to my hair. It faced forward to the horizon before me, as it always did; when I left, it faced into the darkness retreating from a rising sun, and when I reach the brink of return, it will face into that same horizon, towards the place where sun meets earth. Despite the scratches on its polished surface, despite my many falls and tumbles, it remained whole.

 _How long until the stones finally shatter it?_

I buried the thought before it could well. I took a deep breath to push it back in.

The slab, like a protrusion above the sand, stared back at me. Winds blew from behind it, and I could almost imagine the aery blue hue of wind coursing at its sides. I could almost imagine him going " _tch_ ", and shaking his head, his long hair fluttering, brows knitting, and eyes closing as he would go on with another lecture. _Little sparrow, you journey to protect. That is all you must remember. Destroy. Create. It does not matter. Your purpose and what you do to attain it…_

 _Ugh._ The slab found itself beneath my feet. _Have I learned nothing that I must remember your words? How much more should I contemplate on your wisdom?_ The slab moved forward, meeting rock, and splitting sands before me, but it did so gently, as gentle as my mellowed weaving and wordless contemplation. The sun and sky watched me. The stone carried me. The sands made way for me. For a while, I moved without clear purpose, save for distancing myself from the dead shadow of my creation and from thoughts whispering back from the quiet.

 _Great Weaver, am I truly prepared? Great Weaver, have I even learned? Great Weaver, am I ready to return? Great Weaver…_

I moved, lining crooked lines in the sands much like my thoughts that refused to straighten. It was as if She had hidden the answers in between the silence binding stone, sand, sky, and sun. The grief of the waters, my original path, coursed beneath me, and I continued forward like a boulder calmed from its rampage, burdened with its own weight. I had climbed a dune and revealed a horizon gazing back at me. I turned my head, for a second wondering where I was, what I was to do, and where I was going.

To the distance, a monolith stood a dark blemish to the ultramarine, or a horn cutting into the membrane of the sky. Memory beckoned; a red flash orbing around its tip, growing as if to threaten to consume the desert, only to weaken into a color of amber, until the blue of the skies re-emerged from the melting colors... The weeping of the stone wailed in its direction. The mountain of stone I had woven had jutted towards it, towards the scarlet spark. _Like Her finger, pointing..._

I looked to the sky. I knew She was there. _Great Weaver, you've knit the light and the water to this monolith. Is this a sign?_

The gaze of heaven only seemed to loom above me. Wind skimmed between the spaces of my hair. Sands rolled upward the dune. Stones wept. The monolith waited.

But, ultimately, time passed, and with it, a decision held in my closing fists.

The sands rushed apart to the gain of my direction. The winds restored their voice to accompany the rise of my speed. My fingers wove the stone, riding atop the mourning veins, while my eyes, like my headpiece, stayed forward to the monolith at horizon's edge.

I did not wait for Her. I did not wait for the world. I did not wait for any more answers, for any more signs.

I would weave them myself.


	6. Tears Beneath II

**Tears Beneath II**

The monolith rose above the dunescape, parallel to a spear of granite breaching from underneath the sands and into the sapphire sky.

Atop my slab, I surfed towards it, sending grains flying at the forward wedge of my direction, and, as I gained distance, chips of stronger earth began to erupt alongside the sands. With every yard of my travel, the bedrock was lifting, until the dunes, once a thick fur above the understone, thinned into a dusted veil surrounding the monolith's domain of stone.

I would have fallen if I had not looked down. A sudden, sloped edge spliced ground and air. Where I was, the monolith appeared to extend deeper into the ground, encompassed by curving edges pockmarked with granite stoneheads and layered by rugged piles of sand-filmed rocks.

A crater encircled the monolith.

I stopped before the border between ground and empty space. Before me, the bedrock stretched downwards; not far from the ends of titanic bowl. It cradled the monolith in the likeness of an inverted shield.

To the arid blankness of the dunes, this concaving expanse seemed a freckle. One could climb down its rugged, stone-marked slopes, but would need to take caution in their hindered steps, and even then, it would be difficult to go back up, for if I did not have my slab, I imagined clambering down with hand and feet, pulling myself through the stoneheads, and feeling clumps of rocks biting at the soles of my boots. Another thin layer of sand coated the crater's belly, formed perhaps from the battering of sandstorms or carried piecemeal by wandering winds, and, like lesser rocks prostrating themselves, heads of raised earth dotted the crater's sand-floor. All of them slanted towards the monolith jutting from the crater's center.

A scything spire, the end of a scorpion's tail, half-emerged from the bedrock, stilled in its intent of stinging the sun; there it was before me, towering, imposing. It was no larger than a wall of a fortress's heart, and unlike the many sieves of the mountain I'd made, its dark stone flowed seamlessly, wrinkless, like the craft of a sculptor, not a weaver. A true monolith. I felt a lost of weight. It was as if I stood by the tombstone of a powerful being.

The monolith's arcing shape produce a tapered shadow inking a dark finger atop one slice of the crater. At the foot of this shade, there was a pillar of sunlight like a thread to the sky, and beneath it, there glistened an amber sheen, so bright and flaring; a golden eye winking at me.

 _A light not of the sun. Is this it, Great Weaver?_

With my slab, I glided down the crater's walls. The scattered rock tumbled, cracked and swept before the downward surf of my slab's tip.

 _Memories_.

The weave of the slab connected with loose threads, fluttering in tattered frays from the stone underneath.

 _Scattered memories_.

Like strings to a spindle, my mind united them, but they denied my straightening. I could not knit them into sense. They insisted to be loose wisps.

 _They extend deeper, tied to pictures so far down that the distance numbs them. Great Weaver, what is this place?_

When my boots left the slab and met the crater's gathered sand, the untellable memories ceased; the death of a faded song. Everything seemed to notice me, as if I had waltz into a temple at a time of worship: the lesser rocks, the monolith, the very walls of the crater, they all watched me with their unblinking eyes of earth.

 _All of them seem to be connected to each other. Like a mountain under the sands_. _Like family._

I walked forward, my soles straining at the sand-floor of the crater's underbelly, the monolith closing with every step I made. It anticipated me, as if it had noticed my intrusion. A lump grew in my throat.

 _I should not be here_. _Great Weaver, this place offers no greetings. I cannot remain here for long._

The amber light at the monolith's feet beckoned to me. A shaft of light beamed down upon it, a shred of the sun perforating the shadow below. Lustrous colors of amber and bronze swirled upon the shaded walls of sanded granite behind it. _A gemstone?_ I squinted as I came directly beneath the arcing pinnacle. I took one more step forward, closer into this glow curtained by sunlight, but halted.

I turned about, behind me, to where I left my slab, and around me, to the walls. They stared; acolytes to an intruder at the cusp of desecrating a sacred symbol. I arrived here through beckoning lights, and now I was alone by the center of this crater, among faceless stones carrying clouded memories. No winds touched me. No sound, save my own breaths, until they rolled into a sigh. I closed my fingers, and between them, idle threads gathered, like a tangle of straws.

 _If anything happens, I have the earth beneath my feet._

I puffed. I looked to the monolith, then I mumbled.

"So long as you are stone, I can tame you _._ "

Faint fingers of wind flowed over my shoulder.

 _You are the weaver, little sparrow. You are the one who towers over the stone, not the other way around._

And in that moment, the stone seemed to shrink, becoming as thin as but another thread.

Assured, I walked on, carrying with me a tight smile.

The flare of the light subsided to the adjustment of my eyes.

 _Please don't be a trap, please don't be trap…_

Its shape uncloaked out of the light. Half-buried in the sand, it was cylindrical, marred by a splintering gash at its center, where its amber light gleamed from an obscured core.

 _Like a tear of a fallen star_.

Both its form and size reminded me of a barrel or an over-sized spindle, capped at both sides by metallic lids filmed in sand. I approached it, and so near was I, that the sunlight's heat granted a warm caress upon my scalp.

I looked above. There was an opening the shape of a perfectly round circle bordered an image of the heavens. Then, in my memory, there grew the picture of a crimson orb expanding into the ultramarine sky, spherical like a marble ball, fading into mellowed amber.

 _Flawlessly spherical._

The opening rested at the underbelly of the monolith's arcing pinnacle.

 _Flawlessly circular._

And there it was before me, the remnant of that memory, a light like bronze, encapsulated within a cylindrical object. It was unlike any Shuriman relic I've seen before for it donned no ornaments, no grand structure to contain it, and no guardians. A humble artefact among a throng of grand treasures rising above the sand.

It was waiting or me.

 _Great Weaver, am I to take this?_

My eyes tightened at its glow, an intense amber light. The mountain I had made, the flash, my fall, and the waters of the weeping stone, all lead here, to this object, strung together to form a divine hand, reaching out to me…

 _A sign…_

I approached it, crouching as I did so, and lowered my arms to hold its sides. My finger pressed to metal roughed by stray sands. The light shielded the appearance of its source, and so I bent up to pull it closer, to see what was inside, only to feel resistance. With a tightened lip, I pulled again, until I began to yank, until the sand lifted up, flowing down folded arms.

I yelped. The object hopped down when I let go. In reflex, my fingers began to pull threads, intent on weaving as a precaution. But then the strings tying to my fingertips tugged against a hindrance by the skin of the bedrock. _Something is among the stones underneath._

Or someone.

I crouched to where I felt the resistance to my pull, patting my arms around the feet of the cylinder. Sure enough, I pressed at the fullness of arms, of a human body buried underneath.

 _Oh, Great Weaver!_

My crouch broke into a kneel. I set my pack down beside me. "No, no, not again…" With the shoveling of my hands, I dusted the thin film of sand away, hurling handfuls to the side like a sand rabbit. "Please don't be dead, please don't be dead."

When I had moved enough sand, I did not see the whole body; only three parts of it were exposed above the rock: the arms the chest, and the face. The dark face of a boy. His slumbering eyelids pointed to the skyward opening above. _I can't believe it._ I made no delay. I was standing where his stomach should have been, so I stepped aside, and rested both my palms to the stone encasing him.

It was like the earth had once been liquefied and this unfortunate soul just happened to fall into it as it hardened. Through the dried wounds streaking my palms, the threads responded. They vibrated like string to an infant's plucking, in pace with the rise and fall of his chest, struggling for what air it could in its half-buried confine. _He's still alive. Great Weaver, he's still alive!_

I huffed. _I have to hurry._ I concentrated. The threads that wrapped his body told me of the crevices beneath and the mold I was to follow _._ I clenched my eyes shut. I traced the outline of his body. I measured and marked the spaces I was to unravel, and with a deep breath, I unwove the rock. _The smallest patches of embroidery are the hardest to get right._ The surface crumbled. The cylinder lifted. The body emerged, inch by inch. I kept my eyes shut as I focused on his movements, on the gradual rise of his body, accompanied by the threads sliding down from his form.

Too fast, and I would shoot him up. Too slow, and the stones would compress into him. A fringe of my hair swayed to the wind.

 _Balance, little sparrow._

His head and neck portalled out of the ground, followed by his arms, legs, and feet. His torso was half-risen, for the threads by his spine were so tightly knit. Above my own fingers, not a muscle in my body moved, save for my clenching eyes. _Almost there._ But the threads were clumped, tangling into one among another. I tightened my lip. I gritted my teeth. I gave a heavy breath. A stomach emerged, revealing the white fabric of a tunic, and, sensing that the final piece was coming above, I opened my eyes.

I saw my progress. A smile grew on my face. "Yes!" But then I gasped. My fingers had already flicked.

The ground spat him out.

I cupped hands to my lips.

His whole body hopped two hands above the surface with the fabric of his tunic still caught in the earth. It tore. He landed, jerked, with arms and legs wriggling, and then laid completely still, like nothing happened. The cylinder had thudded not far from us.

The spaces of my chest pinched inward, and my hands remained cupped on my lips.

 _Is he awake? Oh, Great Weaver, is he awake?_

The slow descent of his chest was my answer. And, just like that, he remained asleep despite my disturbance. A breath left me, untwisting the cords in my chest. From above, sunlight bathed both of us. All stilled.

I looked to him.

He appeared to be my age. A Shuriman, his color that of a deep brown, like desert granite or sun-dried clay, and his body conditioned, thin yet lean, perhaps from a life of roaming, of shepherding, of scavenging relics, or of all of them combined.

"A boy."

I huffed. Stone between my feet looked back at me. "Great Weaver, a boy? First you send an old man buried in snow, then a woman submerged in river-water, and now a boy entombed in stone?" I threw my hands up. "What's next, an old lady floating in the sky?"

There was no answer. She never had explanations for what she sent.

But they always meant something.

 _Yasuo, Sivir, and now…_ I turned to him. _You, whoever you are._

My eyes spent more than they should on his hair: a ridge of white, like a horse's mane, flanked by cleanly shaved temples marked with bald spots like twin beams on each side. In contrast, his brows were of a deep brown.

 _What odd hair... Is this the mark of your tribe?_

Curious, I crawled forward. His clothing was even stranger.

He wore a sleeveless tunic, its dye of dirtied white sanded and soiled with flakes of earth from the bedrock. It had loops like slings over his shoulder, baring much of his chest and back. I felt the urge to pull one loop up, and I did, and I watched as it flicked back to his shoulder. _Oh..._ The weave of his shirt had no stitches, instead, there were bands of threads, woven by a hand with total control, perfectly straight and symmetrical, running down the length of his body... Sand settled in the baggy wrinkles of his leggings, and so large and curving were the tongues of his shoes, that I could see them from his chest. On his right hand, was a glove adorned with a medallion at its center.

 _Garments not suited for the wastes. What tribe would wear these? Perhaps you are of the the Laaji, but if that's true, then you are far, far away from your home in the Sai Khaleek._

I knit my brows.

 _A foreign trader? But what would you be doing so far from your caravan, and by this monolith?_

Then I frowned.

 _A Noxian?_ _But your skin tells me otherwise, and you have no weapons, and I've never seen a Noxian stuck in stone without me having to weave it..._

I could not tell. His mouth was half-open, and his arms and legs were sprawled out as if he slept on a small cloud.

I was left to stare at him.

 _Where did you come from?_

The sky witnessed me from above, through the flawlessly round opening. A crimson orb flashed in memory.

 _The sky._

A chuckle. _Impossible._ Then there was the cylinder, the amber glow in the dying orb's wake, and I remembered his folding arms, how they resisted my hands as I tried to take the cylinder.

 _A protective embrace…_

I furrowed my brows. Questions multiplied. But he was asleep. "I always find them asleep." I sighed, then I stood up. "Oh, Great Weaver, what am I to do with him now? Should I wake him? But what am I to say? I can't even tell if he's of a tribe, or not. What language am I to greet him with? But even then, what will I say?"

But I knew very well what I wanted to say; one that mattered no matter what tribe or nation he hailed from. With the weight of a breath, I looked back to him, and to the faded traces of my weaving that outlined his body.

 _How did you end up in the stone?_ _Are you a weaver too?_

The cylinder rested an arm's reach away from the boy, lying beside him as if resting with him. _They were buried together…_ The flash, the waters that lead here, and the monolith, I tried to lace their visions together for a hint, but I only found myself looking back to him, wondering where they truly pointed to…

"Great Weaver, is the sign within the cylinder or its owner?"

A ravenous hiss told me that neither would matter now.

Voices echoed from above the crater walls. A rushing presence.

"Here! The light!" Lumbering steps crackled stone. Tails whipped up rocks and then sands. Voices of men yelled and fingers pointed.

"There! Someone's there!"

Guttural hisses. _Dune-drakes_. Their bestial growls and calls erupted from their gnashing teeth as they stomped in side-winding motions toward me.

Three men, wrapped in loose robes rode atop the spiny sand-colored backs of dune-drakes. _But pale versions of their Noxian kin_. Sacks hung tightly to ropes conjoined with their saddle straps. The hammering stench of the beast's breaths were tellable even from their distance, and the solid clicks of their crooked claws drummed impatiently on the stone.

They were rowed in front of me, like a pack.

" _Ahm-sjhal_ among you." I said to their riders. The dune-drakes met my greeting of peace with snaps, hisses, and glares from their golden reptilian eyes. I resisted the shivers in my chest, for both the mounts and the men scowled at me, save for the one leading them.

He was Shuriman, the dark complexion of his face marked with wrinkles and a beard with whitening ends. Down the braided cap of his head, strands of emerald and violet flowed, almost meeting with the copper sash hung around his neck, so loose that it sagged and extended to his upper arms. The angles of his eyes were not far from the likeness of his mount, but his smirk was totally unlike the ripping ends of his dune-drake's maw. Golden adornments shaped like talons hung by chains over his chest. They dangled along with strings of decapitated fingers, each finger having tail feathers of carrion birds plunged into their tip. The other two wore the same ornament.

I closed a fist without commanding it. _Great Weaver, I do not pray for violence. But I am prepared._

" _Uhm-tzal_ , young one." He responded, though he said the word 'peace' that it did not sound like a greeting; but much more a statement. "However, peace is not what we hope to find in this cursed and forbidden place."

He spoke in a dialect marked by a rolling tongue, stressed diphthongs, and sharp pronunciations of 's' and 'tz'. _The tongue of hunters._

"You too saw the light?" I said in a version of his dialect, a close cousin of it, varied yet essentially the same. I did not harden my words that they may not harden their hands around their weapons. He rose a brow at my use of familiar language

"Yes."I felt the wandering of his eyes, from my pack, to my headpiece, my collar's mantle of stone, my granite bracelets, and the lattices of pebbles sewn into the wing-like swathes of my coat. "But we did not expect to see another soul, much less dressed in Ionian fabrics."

I noticed he had no questions for my purpose here. _It is not worth his curiosity_.

"Look." One of his men said to him, as if I did not exist. "The glow, the source of the flash. It must be one of the unearthing treasures."

"And there's a boy." The other said. "A friend, perhaps?"

The two oddities caught the leader's sight. But his whited brows did not rise, they relaxed, then he smiled, grooved ends folding, and looked at me.

"The Turner of Dunes blesses us today." He said. "Two, not one. And a treasure to go with."  
Chains clattered out of their holsters. The beasts turned their necks to the sound, as if knowing what it meant. Their serrated tongues darted in and out. The sound of uncoiling chains excited them.

"Young one," the leader said, "you have heard of Who has returned, and what He would certainly demand. Surely you understand that, before us, you have little to struggle for." As his expression softened, mine darkened and tightened, as did the fibres I had begun to silently knit in the stone beneath.

He continued. "But you are fortunate. We of the Nivim hunt not to resemble the dune-drakes which we ride."

His men groaned.

"Oh, come now, Uhmrei."

"Not another one of your pious undertakings. We can just take all they have and—"

"Hush." He said. "The first prey we corner is always given a choice; the rest are not obligatory. The Turner of Sands would will this for the sake of our people, lest we regress into the likeness of our drakes. After all, mercy is an attribute of the Turner." He smiled, unsheathed his fang-shaped sword, and held, in his other hand, a chain lengthy enough to droop and gather slightly by his mount's claws. "We strive to emulate this attribute of His in what way we can."

I gritted teeth beneath my lips at the sight of their armaments. Uhmrei continued. "Choose, child," he pointed at the glowing object, "relinquish your treasure, your clothes and belongings to us," he tugged his chain, "surrender the value of your flesh and bind yourselves as slaves ," then he tapped fingers at the ends of his sword, "or offer up your fingertips."

He dipped his blade down. He waited my answer with a smile that drained into a frown with each passing second. His beast snapped and hissed.

"Of course, the child will choose the first option!" The man to his left threw a hand up. "You offer her too much—"

"Hush, Tzavi!" He said, whipping his head to him. "Do you not fear the Turner? Have you no faith in the Turner that he will bless us with future bounty? And is it not enough that we ride on voracious beasts, that we must also take all that she has? Have you no mercy for our ancestor's blood that you crave to bind it and take from it?" His voice dared to escalate but, then the man whom he reprimanded groaned yet again, and said nothing more.

The smile of Uhmrei's face had hardened into a faint scowl, but when he looked at me, it returned; wrinkled and broad like that of a lion's grin.

"Let the girl choose. Choosing for yourself is a rite of passage for any clan. If you've none, now is your time."

A breath gathered within, a wordless call to the Great Weaver.

 _My rite of passage has long passed_.

Then, prepared, I faced up to Uhmrei, who impatiently tapped the scaly flank of his mount with his blade. When we met eyes, his smile sharpened.

The seams have been firmly woven.

"I am Taliyah of the Nasaaj, Daughter of Tal and Yannah. You need fear your god to show mercy. I need not fear mine to allow you none." I said. "Drakemen of the Nivim, we of weaving hands and shepherding feet do not pray for harm, but if circumstances—"

Laughter boomed. Hands rose to the air and heads bobbed as mouths stretched wide and fingers pointed. The dune-drakes growled and quivered, wondering why their masters erupted in merry sounds. Uhmrei's body bent forward, howling with laughter, and his men tapped on their saddles, their sleeves fluttering to their energy.

My face flushed. I closed my fists, squeezing the dry wounds streaking my palms. _The pain I feel…_ I waited for them to finish A breeze passed, but they did not stop. _Patience, little sparrow._ The beasts had their scaly necks turned up, bemused by the laughter, yet snarling, as if to remind them of the matter at hand.

"A weaver threatens the hunters!"

"Such a brave proclamation for a member of a petty tribe!"

Uhmrei was first to settle down, and as he did, he said: "So be it, ch—"

Wind blew out of his mouth.

A tile of stone, slung from my weaving, had hurled straight to his chest. He fell from his beast, the stone sinking with him. Stunned, the other men looked to what had happened, and before they could turn back to me, I unraveled another thread, letting loose warps of stone from the bedrock's weft. Conjoined sieves of rock violently shot up the sand. The dune-drake of Uhmrei and his mounted companion to his left heaved into to the air, landing half-way to the crater's walls.

"Uhmrei, Tzavi!" The last rider yelled.

I heard the clatters of chains.

 _Danger comes when your attention is divided_.

As I turned for the remaining rider, iron links lashed at my chest. I yelled, the force almost throwing me to the ground, but with a resolute step, I stayed on my feet.

 _I will not stumble_.

With the momentum of the chain that struck me, I spun around with weaving hands.

A moment paused.

A dune-drake's jaws opened wide before my eyes.

Its yellowed teeth were like stalactites to its endless maw, threatening to tear the skins of my face, if not for a seismic force rending out of the ground, and slamming against the creature's side, crushing it against the ground.

It whimpered. Its tail slithered and threw clouds of sand amid its panic. The rider screamed in his fall. With inching closeness, the crescent-shaped hank of earth I had woven to subdue the drake and man clenched against them.

My fingers clawed inward.

"Chain the innocent no more!"

The growing weight of my stone forced whimpers and pleading hisses from the drake, while its rider, against the shadow daring to envelop him, rose his hands, as if attempting to push back the force I was bearing down upon him.

"Please, mercy!" He wheezed. "Mercy!"

My fingers trembled in place, curling towards me, until dried wounds like ribbons stared back at me from the olive canvas of skin. Mother's wounds. Reminders.

 _Great Weaver, what am I doing?_

My hands released.

The stone pulled back like an unclenching jaw. In struggling jerks, both the beast and the rider escaped from its crush. The dune-drake scurried, whimpering, shambling in its steps, and the man ran away, sending screams in his retreat.

The dune-drakes had bolted over the crater's walls, while their riders, with both hands and feet, hobbled up the mounds of gathered rocks bordering them, like crippled eka'sul dressed in loose robes. I heard Uhmrei's voice, panting in his labored steps.

"Omenbringer! Accursed one! We have walked into the wickedness of her abode! Run! Leave before the Turner delivers us to her corrupted grasp! Faster, Hevel, Tzavi!"

"Scourge!"

"Afflicted child!"

"Cursed be the names of the Nasaaj!"

As they climbed over the edges, their voices went on, until their exiting steps trickled the last rocks.

They disappeared from my sight. I sighed, only to grunt.

The pain of a metallic lash throbbed in my left rib, twining it like hammer to string. I pressed hands to where the links had struck me. Sweat had laced my skin. I sat down on the sand, tired, and realized that I had set myself between the cylinder and the unconscious boy.

 _Great Weaver, let that be my last encounter this day. I wish for no more harming..._

Warps of stone, raised from my weaving, remained above the surface. _Loose ends_. With a tired breath, I stowed them back to their bedrock, the sand filling in where they had once stood. The last threads tethered to my fingers slipped away. The stone rested, as did I, and he did too, throughout the entire ordeal. The boy's body moved, arms and legs sweeping, as if he felt the tremors of my work, but he did not wake.

I pushed a breath. The sun's warmth glowed on my skin before a breeze revisited me.

The aftermath of combat. When once there were pleas and yells, now, silence. Upon me. Upon him.

I pressed my chin against a knee.

"You are lucky you did not see that. You might have gasped. Maybe even shouted a curse."

I turned my face him.

"What would you think if you witnessed my weaving? Will you also run away?"

His answer was but the fall of his chest. _You're not one for speaking, it seems_. I remembered the back of his shirt, overstretching as he launched up the bedrock, and then tearing because of my faulty weaving. I quivered. _Oh, Great Weaver, will he forgive me for what I had done to his shirt? Not even awake, and my weaving has already damaged something of his._ The side of my lip tightened.

 _And knowing my luck, you may be of a weaving tribe or a cloth merchant, and your shirt may have been precious, a family heirloom, or a reminder of home, like my tunic..._

With a heavy breath, I looked above, to the opening, where a portion of the sky glanced, but there was a new color upon it.

A color of faded rust.

I knew what that meant.

I stood up, walked beyond the monolith's shadow, and turned for the sky.

There stretched the blanketing heralds of storm, like eddies of a golden dye spilled upon the sky's tranquil fabric, or the ethereal wings of the desert falcon outstretched as if laying claim to the desert. Yet another sign.

 _The tempests are near. We must find shelter_. _But where?_

I turned around, searching. _The monolith?_ _No. I should leave no trace upon its stone, and being above the sand, it may greet the gales._ A wave of winds blew by, flowing between the cragging rocks of the crater's walls. I set my eyes to those walls. I stopped turning.

 _I must hurry._

I returned to where I left, took my pack, and shrugged it back on. The boy was before me, unaware of the impending fury that was about to strain against the monolith's walls. _You should be awake by now…_ _No matter, we must move._ I went to the cylinder, lifted it up with both my arms as I averted my eyes from its light. With air in my cheeks and awkward steps, I set it beside the boy. I patted my hands afterwards, and placed hands to my hips.

 _How to move you now? Ah!_

I imagined flat bedrock under the sands, and directly beneath the boy, a flat tablet containing him. Threads gathered by my heel, then to my fingers, lowered and stretched wide, but before I lifted, I closed my eyes and muttered.

"Please don't fly off the crater."

I lifted my hands, the threads following them, rising like pulled hair. With my weaving, a bed of stone emerged from behind the boy, carrying both his cylinder and his body in a gentle rise. I did not open my eyes, only felt the rumbling as he rose, and heard the crumbs of earth erupting from his outline.

My hands stilled, so did the stone. I opened my eyes.

He slept upon the stone, an offering upon an altar to the sun. Seeing that he was on solid ground and not soaring into the air, a part of me lost tension through a breath and a smile.

 _Now to hide us from the mantle of the storm._

With a woven tether coiled around my hand, I dragged the bed of stone, carrying the cylinder and the boy, as I headed for the crater's wall.


	7. Echo in the Storm

**Echo in the Storm**

The winds whispered promises of wrath.

Far beyond the monolith, the golden wings of the falcon have soared into the horizon, and with their heraldic passing, there approached the talons of storm, carrying under them the words of rage, whirling from a distant fringe in the sky to mutter in quiet breezes between the strands of my hair. They bound threats of a sundered peace.

Gold and vermillion furled inward the ends of heaven's veil, like feathers fluttering in the wake of the predator's flight, the stones and sands of the crater bearing witness.

A tangle of strings untwined by the weave of my fingers. The earth shook before me. With each tug, flick, and pluck, the earth lurched, twisted, and split apart to unfold the rock-thronged wall of the crater in rumbling rolls. A cavernous opening emerged from the rift, like a scar in the underbelly.

 _Not yet deep enough._

Another telling breeze traced my shoulder. I needed to hurry.

 _Grant this sparrow time to escape, Great Weaver._

I had bore a passage large enough for me and the bed behind to fit, yet I still needed to stretch open room inside, that the gales would not reach us. I glanced at the boy. He lay like a straw man on the bed, stiff and stretched out. He slumbered with his cylinder beside him.

"Don't leave." A rising chest was his answer.

I walked into the underground darkness, the world blotting out around me as I tread into the undershade. A mess of tangled threads greeted my hands in this narrow space. Through the black vision, I felt them.

 _A tent yet to be pitched._

With the split of my arms, the earthen cords aligned, smoothing the crumpled stone, then, with a rise of my hands, the cavern walls heaved away from me in seismic rolls that traced the framework of a circle. _Concave walls, sharp corners. Just like father's tent._

Satisfied with my work, I knit the walls to stay in place. I returned outside.

A gasp. I stopped.

The boy had fallen to the ground, with an elbow still wedged to the bedside, connected to an abandoned arm. His cheek was smothered against the sand, his cylinder having rolled not far beside him. _Is he awake?_ His arms, sloppy and loose, did not move, and his mouth was like a squishy lump against the ground. _That would be my answer_. A sigh of relief left me, and then, a smile. _Great Weaver, the line between death and slumber appears to be thin._

A rushing gale swooped from above, tying sterner warnings to the short locks of my hair, while sands began to seep inward the crater's edges, like spirits seeking sanctuary from the coming storm. With time, the clarity of the air sloughed into a visage of rust and brownstone. The sands were rising.

 _And the line between storm and calm seems even thinner. No more tarrying._

I had to bring the boy and the cylinder inside. First to go was the cylinder, a hefty thing that pushed hard downward the cradling of my arms; bending knees, I set it by the center of the room, where it alighted the darkness with its lusters of amber. After that, I returned for the boy, the heavier one, but when I had exited, the sky had now been warped by billowing beards of enfolding dust so immense that, below them, the monolith seemed a splinter among boughs.

 _Oh no._

There was no more time to heave him back up to the bed. I rushed to the boy, bent down, and hooked my arms under his shoulders. A strand of his ridging, ashen hair brushed against my face. _Phwah! Why does it feel smooth?!_ I dragged him. Hastened bootsteps paced into the cavern, followed by his feet sliding into the amber-lit darkness. From above, malevolent gales plunged down and swept the crater's maw, bringing with them sands like swarms of locust that surged before our shelter's entrance.

I settled him by the side of the entrance passage. His body folded as it melted by the stone. Afterwards, with a hand rested to the wall, I looked outside. Winds of sand gathered fury with each passing second, rushing like a mighty spirit searching for flesh, but not finding the small den I'd woven right under its nose.

I sighed, my breath reverberating in the underground confine.

 _We made it in time._ I look to the dark, amber-lit stones. Her tapestry, cold to my fingertips. _Thank you, Great Weaver._

We were deep enough in the ground that the storm sounded a constant, muffled blow of wind and sand sifting across grooves of stone. An undertone for my thoughts.

I returned inside, and slid off my pack, placing it adjacent to the sleeping boy. I smiled. _Now there's a tired lump sitting with another tired lump_. I dusted the sands off my hands, and, eager for a moment of rest, I set myself not far beside him, the swathes of my robe melting down by my sides as I rested with my back against the wall. I stretched my legs until the heels of my boots were flat on their bottoms, and a view of the lucent cylinder lay before me, its amberlight emanating like a father of candles who warded off shadows.

 _It does not need the sun to make its light._ _A wonder._ I peered, expecting the image of its source to silhouette in its casing. _Is it perhaps an artefact, a reliquary? Why was he holding it?_

Then I turned to the boy, the only who could have answered my questions. Yet he was still asleep. His head had fallen to the side of my pack, and now he seemed to rest on it like a hard pillow. The side of my lip tightened, but a sigh interrupted it.

Wisps of his shirt's beige-white fabric frayed out the ends of an uneven tear running down until the middle of his spine.

"I guess it's fair you lay on my things. I tore the back of your shirt." I said in my native tongue, the language of my thoughts. "You should know, in my tribe, we rip a piece of our clothes as a gesture of tremendous grief. I've done it once."

He was quiet. I puffed.

"And it looks like I've done another, for you."

Then I pulled my knees towards me, until I could rest my chin on their cusp.

"If fortune keeps us, the sandstorm will only last half this day. If not, then we might as well rest on patience." I said to him. "And I might as well think of something to say to you, that is, if you wake up, and I hope you do. I have so many questions, and I'm blessed with time to prepare them, so I have decided _not_ to wake you up. Hm."

My eyes turned up, searching, then returned to him.

"What were you doing there in the stone? How did you get there?" Then I muttered. "No, no, not right. I shouldn't ask you the questions immediately. That would unnerve you, like it did with the last one. Ah, I know, I should first greet you, _and then_ I ask you the questions. _Ahm-sjhal, what were you doing there in the stone?_ "

I shook my head.

"No, that would still be awkward, and what if you don't speak any Shuriman, Ur-Nox, or Ionian? But in that case, how would I know where you come from? Perhaps I should be quiet first. I'll let you do the asking, and we can flow from there once I know the tongue you speak, right?"

I showed a faint smile. He remained still, and so my smile faded until my head dropped to press its crown against my knees.

"Great Weaver, I am going mad, that's all it is. You send another unconscious body, and I still don't know what to say. Not like I am ever prepared for it."

As I turned up, I caught the sight of shadows of pebbles spiking outward the cylinder, toward us.

 _He sleeps as if he had not slept for a hundred days, and I talk as if I had not talked for much the same._

I picked one pebble nearest to me, no larger than a nut. The memories in the stone were still tattered and untellable, like how he was still asleep and unresponsive, so in their place, my mind weaved its own. Memories of falling snow, flowing wind, and never-ending lectures. Memories of piercing blue eyes, jet-black hair, and dripping blood.

"If you're anything like them, what threads would your memories have?"

Furrows ran along the dark fabric of the stone. I squeezed it into the folds of my palm. Wounds muttered pain. Stone softened and molded.

"The ones before you were also sleeping, and, like you, they had long hair, and slept in the strangest places when I found them."

The pebble in my hand dented to my weaving. I smiled.

"If there's any pattern to this, then I need to be careful with you. Both of them thought about killing me when they woke up."

I took another pebble near me, and combined it with the one in my hand. My fingers pressed. Their stones latticed upon one another to form a mending embrace. A workable sliver appeared in my opened palms.

"Well, as mother would say, the signs that She, the Great Weaver, sends always tell of Her pattern, like motifs that bring the mark of Her fingers. If She tells you three poems, they will have a common rhyme. If She weaves you a hundred patterns, they will share at least one design… "

I worked with more pebbles, bringing them together to the sliver until a considerable mass gathered, and in the haze of my thoughts tranced in weaving, I had barely noticed the patterns I began to sew.

"If She whispers a single word, it will echo in time…"

Three arms swirled inward the center atop my palm, like wind, like water… When I noticed this, I tilted my head, realizing that I had begun to create something more than just a combination of pebbles. _Should I turn this into a bowl?_ I didn't need to think of the answer. My fingers pressed and knit, until a dent appeared at the middle, the trace of a bowl's bottom.

 _Bowl it is then._

Below my fingers, the stones churned into one another in a gathering spiral.

 _Now to make the walls without ruining the pattern._

"This isn't for me, by the way." I said, "I know that when you wake up, you'll be hungry, like how _they_ were, so I'm preparing for that as well, with this soon-to-be-bowl. Maybe then you won't think about killing me if you knew that I made this for you."

I looked at him.

 _But is it a bowl he really needs?_

My fingers stopped.

The gash at the back of his shirt watched me.

 _No, of course not._ An idea nudged me. _No, I can't repair it. I wouldn't have enough threads._ I turned myself back to the half-formed bowl in my hands. The distraction contorted the symmetrical swirls of the pebbles, one now wider and more arcing than another. _A single mistake changed the entire pattern._

A faint grunt left me. Looking at the error I made in distraction, I thought of them like uneven… threads.

I got up immediately.

 _I know now!_

I turned for the boy, then I pulled him up, placing his back to the wall. I set him straight with the soft squeezing of my fingers, pushing him softly inward and upright, so that he would not fall to his sides.

"Stay." I said. His head bent down, chin against his neck, and it was as though he was presenting me the wild ridge of ashen hair arcing up his scalp.

I pulled up the bottoms of his shirt, tugging out the cloth outward his sleep-stiff arms, but then I stopped.

 _What are you doing undressing this boy?_

I shook the thought away.

 _Not a question I should ask. I need to fix what I've broken._

Then I pulled again.

 _If my journey necessitates unclothing strangers, Great Weaver, then here I am._ _Just please don't let him wake up._

The shirt was off. I had it in my hands. I stood up and, crossing my legs, I set myself near the cylinder. I removed my coat and laid it as wide as I can across the cylinder, where its light washed the amber-brown of my coat, and there, I set his shirt down on the inner side of my garment. I patted it until the shadows of its wrinkles were faded and the split at its back was centered and readied.

The tear awaited me.

 _I made you. I can undo you._

I set the half-formed bowl near my folded knees, and plucked a pebble embedded into one of the swirls. With both my hands, I pressed down and imagined stretching the loomed threads with heddle sticks tucked into both ends, tightening them in a rectangular strand. Not long, a strip fashioned in that very shape appeared before my weaving fingers.

Then, I pressed the strip down to the tear, hugging both of the sleeveless shirt's frayed sides.

A deep breath lifted my chest. I closed my eyes. Again, my fingers wove, the movements miniscule, like crafting a new embroidery.

Through the symmetrical spaces of the shirt's weave, the fibres of stone bent down to interlace with the fibres of cloth. Earth and fabric spliced. Lapidary and threadwork fused. A bridge formed in the space between the shirt fabric's shredded ends, with the stone extending under, connecting with itself, like a brace closing into its own ends.

When it was done, I opened my eyes, and smiled. To my fingers, I tethered another pebble hewn from the supposed bowl, and as I began to work another band, a hum kindled between my lips, eventually flaring into a melody of creation. I had made a second band, and then another, until the bowl I had been so focused on not long ago, was no more.

I raised the shirt before me, and with it, a stupid grin.

A line of earthen band enveloped the tear, a row of compact stitches. They were three, like flat blocks, enough to cover the length of the ripped space and small enough not to hinder movement. I turned it left and right and felt the fluttering of its fabric and the weight of its new component. I couldn't help but stay my eyes at my weaving. Then I giggled.

 _If only I could dye them indigo._

I stood up, bringing with me the shirt, and returned to the boy. He was bent forward in the way that I've unclothed him, so with the shirt over my shoulder, I nudged him up with my hands, straightening him.

On the partially-shadowed nakedness of his chest, there winked a blue sparkle, catching my eyes. My brows furrowed.

 _An amulet?_

The shape of a coin, it was laced around his neck, a color of brass faint, yet almost in harmony with the orange-brown light. At its center, was a blue gem, a sapphire or an aquamarine, glistening to the trace light.

 _A clue to who he is…_

My hand neared it.

But I pulled it away.

 _No. I repaired his shirt. I've intruded enough._

Lifting each of his arms up I begun to redress him, working his tense limbs in between his shirt's loops, and then dragging the ends down to the belted edge of his trousers. After I was done returning his shirt, his head remained bent to his neck, the weight of slumber carried within it. _You are a heavy sleeper, aren't you?_ A smirk grew on my lip. _Hopefully you don't have an appetite to match that._

I looked to my sack.

 _And speaking of appetite._

I turned and crawled for my pack.

I stopped. I heard a voice.

His voice.

"Aj…"

I looked to him.

"Ajuna…"

I rose a brow. _Ajuna_? He mouthed the same name, but no sound left him. I came closer. His lips had stilled, and so did my anticipation of his awakening.

 _You are dreaming of a name... Are you seeking that name's bearer?_

His face no longer moved. He was still asleep. My eyes wandered to the ground as I sat opposite him, folding my legs.

 _When our dreams sober up, little sparrow, they'll tell us of two things: either hope for what we seek, or fear for what we do not have._

"Ajuna." I repeated. "You are looking for someone too?"

The shadows of his face melted to the amber light. I looked to the cylinder, a hint to his purpose in the stone. Its aura never diminished. Neither did my curiosity when I peered at its opaque center. My body turned one side to towards it, daring me to hobble forward until I could look deep into its capsule.

But, with furrowed brows, I forced myself to return to the boy

"For your sake, I should not. It maybe sacred to you." I looked to him, my brows softening. "Like them, you'll have your secrets, and, soon enough, you will leave my side, like they did. I don't need to know what they are. It will not matter when we inevitably part ways."

My eyes lowered, only to follow the miniscule grooves in the stone flooring the fringe of amber dominion and shadowed outlands.

 _I didn't need to say that._ A heavy, silent breath, seeping out my lips, puffed my cheeks. _Oh, Taliyah, talk as if you hadn't talked for a hundred days…_

In the drift of my eyes, my pack came to view.

 _And hungered for much the same time._

I bent forward from my place, dragged the lumpy sack to the space inward my folded legs, and unknotted its tie. Soon, two pouches were between us; one chunky with cured meats, and another bulged with eka'sul cheese.

Since I had already rethreaded the tear of his shirt, I could focus on weaving another bowl, and I did, denting a sliver made from a few pebbles, until concave walls with undulating grooves of my decoration formed.

I placed it in the space between us.

 _A guest is always honored the first serving._

And there, I left one strip of cured meat paired with a notched piece of cheese. Then, I released one waterskin tied to my pack, and set it beside his bowl.

 _No matter your language, this will speak for me the moment you wake up._

Finished with setting his food, I readied for my own. With no tap water to wash the grime of labor, I patted my hands against the fabric of my leggings, reached into the pouches, and ate before him amid the muffled sounds of a sandstorm scraping against the walls. The lip-drying salt of the cured goat meat, the cream hardness of the cheese, and the skinbag water to wash their flavors down were welcome feelings to my belly. _Bless you, Great_ _Weaver._

After eating, I stowed the pouches away. _There should be enough for a few more_ _days_. I set my pack against the wall, and as I did, I noticed the long lavender sleeves of my tunic running down the length of my arms. _My coat…_ I had almost forgotten that I took it off. For a moment, I looked around, and saw it there by the cylinder, where I laid it out to work on the boy's shirt.

I stood up, took it, and brought it with me to him. But then I paused. With the coat still in my hands, I looked to the boy. It was as if he dozed off before even touching a meal. Out a growing stare, an idea bubbled.

 _I shouldn't. I have done so much already._

Yet I stepped forward, and lowered myself.

 _But if he doesn't wake, I will soon be resting in the company of a total stranger. Surely I need some more assurance of a safe sleep._

I draped the coat below his neck, stretching the inner sides of its sleeves to envelop his shoulders, with the rest of the coat covering his body until the legs. His chin rested on collar's mantle of stone, almost like a mane, and the stone-latticed swathes flanked him in a messy mesh. Through the wrinkled droop of my coat, my eyes felt the drums of a dream thumping beneath his chest.

 _I know I am doing too much, but I can never be too careful. Should he leave all of a sudden in my sleep like the last one, then at least he would have this to make him feel guilty, and if he is a good soul, he will come back and return it to me. And if not, well, it is better to err on the side of doing what is right._

Having eaten and dealt with the boy and the his shirt, I had little to do. The sandstorm's roars beyond the woven walls told me that it was not going to end any time soon. For a while, I did not sleep.

I paced around the cavern of my weaving alongside the shadows of my footsteps. I toyed with the stray pebbles, picking them up, and sitting down to sculpt them into shapes, only to get bored of picking up and sculpting pebbles soon after, which lead me to sit idle against the wall.

I imagined stars in the dark ceiling, then those stars disappeared into thoughts, and the thoughts into memories, and the memories into an urge to distract myself from them. I wove small embroideries on the walls, the lines flowing to the streams of my mind.

First, I wove the traces of a sword, maybe because the Nivim carried them, or because it was easy to doodle. And then I drew a cross, like a stitch or two meeting roads, and then the cylinder, the one near me, that provided light for my earthen canvas.

I yawned.

I drew a sharp triangle, with stripes athwart its body, much like an echo, or the monolith, yet pointing downwards, with a circle hanging from its tip. At its center, was a person, arms and limbs sprawled, falling.

Below it, I drew another triangle, filled with a pattern of woven braids shooting up, a silhouette at its tip, feet above the pinnacle, rising.

Above, falling. Below, rising.

I imagined switching their positions. Like an hourglass.

Above, falling. Below, rising.

But falling all the same.

Falling down. Falling up. Falling towards. Falling to the center.

Falling asleep.

* * *

AN: I loved, _loved_ writing this chapter; Taliyah's second thinking, Ekko's complete unresponsiveness, and the dynamics; all felt good to write and edit. If there were a radio in the cave, I imagined the song "Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit as Taliyah immersed into her creative mojo (and according to her writer, TK, in her Q&A, Passion Pit is one of the artists Taliyah'd likely listen to, so I guess it's appropriate).

I have so much more planned for this story. This couple _must_ be shipped. There isn't enough of it.

This chapter took a little while because of the revisions and me going over the lines again and again. The story is writing itself. Images form, connections weave, and allusions come. I really hope I'm not overdoing it and that I'm getting the characters right. That said, criticism is always welcomed.

Again, thank you for reading. See you on the next one!


	8. Afterimage

**Afterimage**

I was home again. I smelled sweetbread. I smelled smoke. I was sitting in my chair, where the red flash consumed me. The Z-Drive was nowhere. I was still there. Gears and devices sprawled like iron guts on the floor. Blocks and crumbs of sweetbread scattered around my feet. I was still here, as if I never left, as if time stopped and nothing else ever moved again. As if I never left home. As if.

The timekeeper's digits rolled.

Five hours. Zero minutes. Two seconds.

Mom and dad were crying. I saw them; could hear them even, but they could do neither to me. Dad's face was rusty red on his brown skin; mom's too, tears gleaming like water in a cavern, like film on aged walls, and their chests were heaving, their lips whimpering, quailing, and through it all, dad could only bring mom close, like she was next to leave, but I could tell from the way she clutched the white shirt she had gifted me, and the way she smothered it with her eyes, that she wished she left instead of me.

I couldn't take it. I stood up. I tried to speak. I approached but I felt the place flickering, like the walls and the ceiling were dividing in and out of reality. No, it was not reality. It was time, fast forwarding, moments flashing into the future. They left the room. They made a shrine on the wall by my study table with a picture they painted, surrounded by all the stuff I liked. Dad paced back and forth the floor, mumbling to himself some plan on where and how to find me, only to find his fantasies cupped around his face and wet with tears. Mom came in and stared out the window, and then breaking down when she'd glance at the picture of my shrine. They did this a hundred times, their actions flickering as the world did, in and out, entire cycles of grief in an eye-blink. The walls grew cracked. The sheets of my window tore. Dust floated in the light shining through my window. They settled on my bed and on our picture.

My room was their Memorial Wall.

I watched each particle of dust, like shreds of gold in a copper light, until I saw one particle of azure, of a cobalt pixel suspended among golden digits.

Then I encountered another in the air alongside it, and then another, and another, until they seemed to replace all the floating grains, turning them into shimmers of blue. I stepped back. Cobalt plied the walls, pixels of azure breaching through them, and then, like flies, they dissipated all around me, rising in a swirling pillar, to unravel familiar colors beneath. Those colors were a new reality. A different place. A different time. Beneath all the blue.

There was the gang, Lost Children. We were in Memorial Wall, gathered among the candles, like rows of dying pilot lights huddling in the dark. The the wax of my candle dripped alongside Phola's tears to the cliff-stone ground where the feet of a hundred children stood. She set my light down to join the rest, the rest that I failed to save. Now I was one of them.

I came forward among the still lips and solemn whispers. They sat on the pipes snaking above, on the Gray-filmed floor, by the huddling candle-rows, and in front of the mural, like distraught lumps of bandanas, goggles, and kerchiefs. Only Phola, Quiver, and Kip were standing. They were painting my face. I couldn't bear to look at them or the paint cans and brushes that were to lather my memory. But I could still bear to look at the other faces, and at _Ajuna_.

"Ajuna." I said. No one heard me. He and the rest of the others on the wall were the reason I was here.

There was his face; his hopeful smile, his bright eyes, his messy hair, and his goggles strapped to his head. His face, and all the others that surrounded him, were faces of lost ambitions, of lost dreams, and of lost hopes. Lost children. Lost friends. Then I noticed something strange.

Their eyes were looking at me.

Ajuna's head snapped and turned in the mural. Our eyes met. I stood there, among those who mourned me, mouth gaping, and watching the long-dried paint of Ajuna's lips move.

"Is everything okay now, Ekko?"

"Ajuna." I stammered.

"Is everything okay?"

Gunshots. Reminders. They broke the air around us, whizzed through my ears, and sprayed dust all around me. I heard screams. I ducked. The bullets couldn't hit me, except my friends. Phola's face thudded against the floor next to me, her pretty lips caught still in a dead song, and her cheek wet with tears and blood. I could hear the younger ones, ones who couldn't understand my disappearance, call out my name like I'd swoop in to save them. The guns silenced that hope. I covered my ears. I shut my eyes. And I cried.

The screaming stopped first before the guns did. I heard the tubular hiss of esophilters, the clank of augmented feet, and the sneers of a Piltovian throat. "Less sumpsnipes to trouble ourselves with…" one mumbled, "… what they get for being stealing little broodlings… Thought they could make a mark out of the clans… huh, tough luck…"

I heard metal boots crush skulls. I heard iron-soled shoes step through shoulders, prodding at necks and temples with the barrel of his gun. "Justice exempts nobody, you squealing gutter-rats…" A gunshot cracked through my ears. There was a brief silence, a brief mumble, and the steps continued, treading on clothed flesh. They were killing survivors.

I couldn't look up. I couldn't tear my hands off my ears. This was all my fault, all my fault for leaving them behind to erase the faces on the walls. Now nobody 's left to paint anyone's face. Because of me. Because of them.

I gritted my teeth. Those Pilties, those skyblood, heartless, scumsucking parasites of "progress". If I couldn't save them, I would avenge them, kill every last vigilnaut and Piltiovian enforcer I see in these sumping chem.-pits, and take my rage to the corruption above and purge every last one of them. This vengeful hope gave me the strength to open my eyes so that I could burn their faces into my memory, and when I did, I saw the bullet holes dotting the wall, dotting the faces in concrete craters. Only my face was left unscathed.

Then I turned around to see the vigilnauts and their Piltovian host. I stopped, then stepped back. I screamed. I pressed my back against the wall. They could see me. I could see myself in all of them.

All of them had my face. They walked atop the bodies of my dead friends.

Then like pus from infected Grey-pox pores, cobalt pixels shot through the bullet holes behind me, drowning all the faces , all the bodies, and all the candles. But not my screams. The pixels spiraled up in a billowing vortex of azure. Another reality unfolded.

I was in my room again. Dust caked my shrine. Mom and dad were nowhere. A cobalt chem-light dimly emanated from the window. I could hear my own breaths. Something wasn't right.

My door was half-closed. I saw something move by its foot, something liquid and puddling, marred bronze through the light behind me. It was a contrast to the blue, a color of deep scarlet. Blood.

My mouth dared to shout, but I was shivering, shaking my head, and peeling my eyes to what I was seeing. I already guessed who owned it. I approached the door. The blood was so much that I felt my next steps plod to its viscosity. It was fresh. It smelled.

The light from my room penetrated through as I opened the door. There was mom and dad, face down, their backs ripped open, from their spines to their thighs. _No, no, no, no ,no, no._ I rushed to them. I felt their blood soak my knees. _Please, no, please, please, not you guys too, please, please._ Their eyes were wide open. The whites of their hair were stained with crimson.

I lost it. I pounded the ground. I wailed. I pressed their faces to mine. I let my tears mix to the red puddle all around us. I grieved over the warmth of their open bodies, and the warmth of our memories, of our name-days, our dances on Progress Day, and the lullabies.

At that moment, I didn't know what else to do beside mom and dad's corpses. I just wanted to sleep there. Maybe mom will sing me her lullaby before she's gone. But she was and Dad alongside her. But I hoped and heard the songs in memory. I did best to stop my whimpers. I wanted to hear them clearly.

Sleep. We'll sleep together, I thought, and I felt myself swaying between another dream and the scent of their warm blood mixed to their cheap, Entrasol colognes.

A hand gripped my shoulder as if to wake me. I turned around.

I saw nothing but two enormous blades with their tips lodged into the floor. I followed the length of the silver blades, red with my parents' blood, and then I saw cerulean eyes, a pale face, and ashen hair fixed that no lock strayed. On her chest, was a blue crystal, cut to brilliant facets, and glowing in the dim light. She lifted one of her legs, pointed its blade that it became a glintless iron star above me, then spat:

"Thief."

Steel flashed between my eyes.

I remembered what Ajuna said. What I said.

Everything will be okay when you…

* * *

AN: Sorry for the long wait. I was busy with my academics and, again, much had happened in my life. I had managed to finish around three chapters for Homebound, this being the first one. I will be publishing the next in a few days after a few more edits.

I hope I have done Ekko well enough in this chapter. This chapter is rather grittier than what I've written so far but I did enjoy writing this almost as much as I have enjoyed writing the chapters to follow. I have thought hard about this story (that is, reimagined many dramatic, fluffy, and tragic scenes between Ekko and Taliyah) and I am delighted to reveal what comes next.

Furthermore, there is one inputted meaning in this chapter:

 _Timekeeper:_

Five hours. Zero minutes. Two seconds = תוצאה (Totzaah) = Consequence

I dearly apologize for not following up on this story (and on my FF account in general). I lost a lot of online activity due to some recent events. I hope my following submissions will compensate for my inactivity, especially to those who have waited long for an update. This story is so far the most followed Taliyah fic and I thank you all a lot for reading and enjoying my work. I am just as fired up to make this perfect pair and concept _work_ , so I'll do my best to keep writing this.

Thank you again to those who followed, faved and reviewed. Your feedback means so much to me given that I put a lot of thought into this story, so please, if you have any criticism or remark that I should take note of, feel free to say so that I can improve.

See you all on the next one!

P.S. I am touching up the story briefer. I noticed that two of its sections, the important updates and story status, are heavily outdated. I am keeping the introduction and the inputted meanings section.


	9. Sky and Earth

**Sky and Earth**

"NO!"

My eyes shot open. I shouted into a resounding space, voice croaking with a waking rasp. Sweat was like cold oil on my paper-thin skin, so much that I felt it chill the brass of my amulet upon my chest, and mud the inside of my shoes and my gloved right hand. I sprang up, and felt something heavy, something draping me, follow my movements, but there was a shadow over my body that couldn't make me stand; it was another body, no, _a face_ , that shouted in return as she stumbled back, surprised. A girl.

"Ah! _Ehr-taa! Ehr-taa ofs olch ofs!_ " she exclaimed in a language I've never heard before. Though the room was lit in some coppery color, I could make out her short brown hair, a metallic hairpiece, the olive tone of her freckled face, and the excited lift of her thick eyebrows. Her eyes glinted a clear hazel, like mine, and they were opened in surprise, very much like mine.

"Who are you?! Where am I?!" I stood up _. No, no,_ _no!_ _I'm not in my room!_ I looked around, frantic, completely unfamiliar with this place, and taken by the feeling that nothing was right about the Z-Augment's outcome. The walls formed a round confine with sharp corners, like a berry juicer or an iron nut, and I thought for a moment that I was somewhere underground in the Cliffs, but no part of it was concrete nor metal. It had no breather pipes, no vents, nor any semblance of steel, gas, or chem. And the air.

The air.

It was not textured, not thick, not visible that you could see it gather into your nose with every breath. Something about it felt clear, felt wrong. It had no fume-ish smell, no toxic soreness. No Gray.

All this meant I wasn't somewhere in Zaun. The panic in me tripled, and in my confusion, the first instinct I followed was to find my Z-Drive.

It took only a second, for there it was, the only source of light in the room, and I could see it behind the girl's shoulder, glowing like a bright capsule that lit the chamber in a bronze halo. I rushed to it, and as I did, the coat placed over my shoulders came off in my haste and I felt something cold tug and click at my nape as I ran for my drive.

"Wait! Now I know! You speak the tongue of the north-eastern traders! You are among those of the caravans!" The girl said. "You're a Piltovian, and thank the Weaver, you're finally awake! So _Ahm-sjhal_ , what were you… Hey, wait!" Her voice faded. "Wait..."

I approached the Z-Drive. Tears began to gather in the undertone of my panic. Nothing about it seemed right; not with its new tint, its intense light, its broken chassis, and the fact that it was the only one of my devices I could see in the room. There was nothing else from what had flashed before my eyes when I disappeared into that red warp: no Augment, no Zolt-Heart, and no timekeeper. No Ajuna. The acceleration module of the drive which excited the crystals to turn back time was no longer turning in its passive state, and there was no sign of the crimson flash I saw when I had activated it

"No, no, no!" I took the drive by its sides and peered inside the bright core of its gash. My chest hollowed. I nearly gasped. The shards were not there. Instead, there was one solid piece of a golden brown crystal, lying there inside the chassis. "What in the sumps…"

I took it with my left hand. It fit like a lump of ore carrying some strange warmth that enveloped my palm. It felt incredibly light for its size, like hollow stone, and from within its crystalline core, it scintillated a sporadic assembly of firelights. I inspected and rotated the crystal, observing that the light would refract, giving away scattered and brief moments of intermingling colors. The girl behind me gasped, struck by its brilliance, then I heard the strangest noise that pricked into my ears. It sounded like humming, rising and falling, until it seemed a melody of a voice, male or female I couldn't tell. The shards only ever made sounds like constant whirs and high-pitched tones, but this… It was a song.

I stared, awed by the change in both its structure and property. I never saw anything like it, but then what awe I felt washed away. This crystal was my death.

"Janna's mercy…" I dropped the crystal, thudding back into its chamber."This shouldn't have happened… by the Gray, this shouldn't have happened!"

With the crystal whole, there was no more controlling the time-manipulative properties of its shattered pieces' behavior. It had to be shattered for me to rewind. That's how I've always done it.

But to re-shatter it now to regain the crystal's pieces, if there was any way to, would vaporize me into mush. That's what happened to the laboratory where I found it.

It was stuck this way. I was stuck.

I had no rewinds.

Now, there was no denying it. I was trapped in whatever place or timeline the damned crystal took me. A failed outcome. The time, effort, and blood poured into giving me a chance to save them all… Wasted.

"No, no, _no_! This can't be! This can't sumping be!" Desperate, I tried activating the drive, thinking against all logic that the mechanisms designed for the shattered crystal pieces could somehow work on this whole one. I needed a surprise that was on my side. I hoped for it.

So I pulled the string of its first primer, and turned the knob of the second. No response came from both these actions. No spin from the device, since the hextronic modules were fried or torn apart, and no sign of any activity from the crystal; Janna knows what the Z-Heart's sum total energy did to it. I tried again. First, then the second primer, nothing. Again. Nothing. Until, as if to ceremoniously throw away the last of my hope, I twisted the third primer on the glove of my right hand which would have triggered the rewind cycle. Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened.

"Damn it! Damn, damn, _damn_ this sump-pounding coghead!" I said, twisting the third activator again and again until I slammed a fist onto it. As the first tear broke through my eyes, I stood up and kicked the blasted drive. "Damn this all!" The metal echoed with my voice. There was nothing else right to do. It didn't go very far, and when its light moved to the force of my foot, so did my shadow. The device stopped rolling, tunking by the wall, and then sat there, the device and its gash staring back at me, broken and lost, like my only chance to reverse my mistakes, to reverse their deaths.

"Damn me…" I wiped the first wave of tears off my eyes. "Why did this happen? Why?"

Something must have caused it to be this way. I thought that it might not have been the Z-Heart. It might have not been me. It could not have been me. Might have been the energy overflow, sure, but it also may be something done to it afterwards, when there was no way I could've known. I had never failed _this badly,_ this irreversibly, with any of my inventions, not after all my precautions and instruments made to stabilize this supercharged rewind. I wasn't willing to blame myself this easily now.

So I turned to the girl who had been watching me. She wore a long-sleeved lavender tunic and tight fitted leather leggings that ended in boots; she could be a burglar or thug for all I know. She had been standing closer and stayed completely quiet, at lost for words with what I had been doing.

"You." I got on my feet and approached her. "You touched the drive, didn't you? Maybe even kept the augments and took the Zolt-Heart for yourself. I don't know you, I don't care to, but if you messed with my things, I promise you, I will make you _bleed for it!"_

Her brows knit and she stammered before she could begin. "Augments… _Zolt-Heart_? I know nothing of these things you seek and I swear by the Weaver, that I did not do so much as peek inside your cylinder, for I thought that it may be sacred to you. Now I see was not wrong…"

"Sacred?" I repeated. The anger cracked out of me. "Sacred?!" I came to her, and so shocked was she, that she didn't push me off when I held her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Janna knows it's more than sumping _sacred_! It's my only way home, my second chance at all the wrong I've ever done! It's the reason why what's left of my friends are alive, why _I'm alive_! It's everything to me, worth a million times more than all the Graydamned cogs from Piltover to Zaun! It's who I sumping am! Do you understand?!"

I could say no more, for I seemed to scare her, saw it in the way she looked back. She had no idea of the things that had happened for me to end up here and the things I meant, except that I was in pain and that everything about me; my world, my decisions, and my history, was no longer right. My face contorted. Another wave of tears came off, and then all so suddenly, I felt ashamed to be before her, to be seen by those eyes of a pitying stranger. I looked down and saw silvery drops dribble between our feet. I couldn't help it. I was breaking to the lowest I'll ever be, in front of this a girl whom I didn't know.

After a brief silence, I felt a gentle hold to my left arm's wrist. It was hers. I looked away from her. "I found nothing else with you aside from that cylinder, and, I give you my word, I did not tamper it in any way. I am sorry, deeply… I know what it is like to-"

"There was nothing else?" I said, voice softened. I took my arms off her and looked at her again. Her freckled face was so distraught, with her thick brows knit up and her hazel eyes reflecting what pain it could bear from my own. "Nothing? Nothing at all?"

"No. I am sorry." Her voice was soft. She looked at me with no sign of turning away. I couldn't meet her sincerity. "The cylinder was all that was with you. I wish I had found what else important to you."

I lost it. My knees grew weak. I faded down in front of the girl, who, as I surrendered myself down, had let go of my wrist. I ended up lying with my back to the floor, staring at the dark, dark ceiling. That moment, no loneliness I ever felt could come close. I was a single water drop from a pipe over dry granite. I was a bulb of neon that didn't flash in a world of light. I was a polluted molecule of the Gray straying too far into the air above. I was doomed.

I thought I saw the faces of my dead friends on the empty canvas of the ceiling. I thought I saw mom and dad, now both alone someplace dark without their only son. I thought I saw Ajuna in that darkness, the same darkness where he was in now, where I tried to pull him out, only to see that I had no chance at all.

Time. I just needed more time. I had all of it yet I was still too late. I will never be done with my promise, no chance now. So I closed my eyes and faced a black blankness of my own.

"I failed." I covered my eyes in my arms. I sobbed. "Oh, mom, dad, Ajuna, the gang… Oh, dear Janna, what have I done? The crystal's all wrong, the drive's broken, and I don't know, I don't know what do next... I have no rewinds, no second chances, no time. People can die. I can die."

By my chest, I felt the cold brass of the amulet mom and dad gave me, and I clutched it, held it close, and read the inscription.

 _No better a home than in the arms of family._

I shut my eyes and my sobs lowered to whimpers, and the whimpers, to shivers, and then a long quiet passed. I turned my body to its side, and felt that the world could take me and I'd be totally content. I didn't need to know where I was. I didn't need to know what timeline I ended up in. All that mattered was that I failed, and fixing anything was an impossibility with the way the crystals had changed. I'd be better off dead like the ones I tried to save.

Then I heard the girl's voice.

"Is there anything I can do to ease you?"

I couldn't answer her. My thoughts busied me too much to care about what she said, much more consider what could help me now. I ignored her, and after a while, I sensed that she was walking around, picking things up that I couldn't see, and then I felt her walk to me and stop. I peeked from my arms. She was offering her hand.

"Please, eat. You had slept for almost an entire day since I had found you. Your body must be weak from hunger."

She was looking at me with that same some solemn pity in her eyes, but there was a glint of something brighter, something kind. She was wearing her coat now, which I dropped as I ran to the Z-Drive. It had a brace of stone, and two swathes latticed with little pebbles. I never saw anything like it. She had a bowl in her left arm, with the other outstretched to me.

I sighed. I felt weak all over, like every part of me's wrung out all the energy I had left. I didn't feel like eating. What did it matter now?

"Thanks, but I'm not hungry." I mumbled.

"I can't let a stranger like you starve when I have food to spare. Not all those who refuse help need be abandoned. If you cannot eat for your own sake, maybe you can for mine?"

I was quiet, and though she did not notice, I looked away from her, feeling that I would inevitably decline her offer and embarrass her, but this stranger, whoever she was, didn't feel right to leave me alone. I was probably here in some enclosed safe place because of her, and she could have bolted off with the precious-looking crystal inside the drive and left me alone long before now. But she didn't. So I couldn't bring myself to refuse, wasn't right, no matter how much my emotions caused me to recoil, thus I let them fade in my quiet indecision, until they were pacified just enough that I could take her hand.

So I did, and with a firm clasp, she lifted me in one pull, and though both our palms were calloused, there was warmth in hers. I got on my feet. We let go. I didn't have to look at her to sense the hint of her smile, probably because I finally gave in.

"Here."

She offered me her bowl, decorated with a plain wavelength pattern running along its sides. It carried a piece of something white and a strip of something reddish. "What's this?" I said.

"That is goat cheese and dried meat, enough to satisfy one's belly until midday. Come, let's sit by your cylinder where there is light." I followed her to where the drive had stopped after my kick.

"Please, sit." I did as she said, sitting by the crystal-glow hearth of my half-broken drive, and then she left to go get something in the darker place of the room and came back, carrying with her a sack where two waterskins hung. She removed one and offered it to me. "Here, have this waterskin. Drink first. Your thirst must be great, but do not drink too much. You will need the rest of it. Drink only until your thirst is just gone."

It was a small long-necked bag with a linty surface. A cork capped it, so I took it off, and drank. The water was warm, but then it coolly flowed into me, wetting everything dry inside, and though I wanted to fill myself up with the whole thing, I followed what she said and drank just enough. Once I was done, I corked it back and placed it beside me.

"Feel a bit better..." I muttered. "Thanks…" But my failure still wrapped my head, so I said no more, and stared at the ground.

"Now eat, please."

So she began to take little pouches from the inside of her sack, which, I assumed, contained food. I didn't eat immediately. I was remembering the dream I had; of home, faces, gunshots, blood, and steel. I wondered if I had truly woke, and if this were some after-death stasis of dreams forever cycling until my mind decays. With that thought, I looked around expecting to see some cobalt pixel or ominous detail, but there was nothing but the rounded walls of stone. I was awake now. I was real. She was real.

And as my glances ended, I noticed that the girl hadn't touched the pouches in front of her. She wasn't eating. She was looking at me. When I noticed, she turned her eyes away. She sat there, opposite me, and appeared to be dealing with thoughts of her own.

Nothing about her was anything I'd ever seen: the coat, the headpiece, her accessories of stone, and the way she looked. This girl was the stranger that brought me here and helped me, I thought, and I didn't know what to say to her, not with what just happened, and what she witnessed.

I took my bowl. There was the cheese and the strip of meat. I went with the cheese first. The texture was porous, almost chalky between my fingers, and as I bit in, there was a noticeable solid push against my teeth, so it was different from the soft cheeses back home. I munched, and it broke in my mouth until it'd stick mostly under my tongue in a melted lump of salty cream. I swallowed my first bite, then felt my stomach tingle, satisfied.

The girl remained quiet. She was rubbing hands against the fabric of her coat before unpacking her own food from one of her pouches. It struck me as odd, then, I looked around this room, to the walls and its sole entrance where some sort of faded bluish light faintly seeped in. Was this where she lived? There were little stone figures randomly scattered near the walls: people, animals, and solid shapes with dark patterns embedded on them. In the light of the cylinder, their shadows were like needles piercing into the dark, and, in that same light, I noticed that there was something drawn into the wall adjacent to us, weird symbols: a sword, a cross, and two triangles just barely intersecting by their apexes, where two figures lay.

"I made those while you were asleep." She said, noticing my looks to the scattered little sculptures. "There was not much to do as the sandstorm ravaged outside."

"Sandstorm?"

"Yes." She said, taking a moment to chew. "They stir the dunes of Shurima far more frequently now. It is a blessing that I found you before the storm did."

 _Shurima?_ That was the continent south of the Valshur Channel. I knew next to nothing about it, except that it was a lifeless land which got more barren the further you walked. With the girl telling me about sandstorms, I figured that I was far, far down.

But why here? And why did the crystal reform _here_ of all places?

"How did you find me?"

The girl paused, taking this moment to both chew and collect her answer.

"I was travelling from Vekaura when I saw a great red orb-shaped light to the horizon, which flashed then faded into a color of amber before disappearing. It coincided with my rout so I investigated and discovered its origin directly by the foot of a massive monolith that rested at the center of a crater, where this cave lies now. There I saw the sheen of your cylinder, and mistook it for a gem or a piece of treasure. I tried to inspect it, yanking it off from the ground, only to be surprised when your arms from beneath resisted my pull. It was then that I discovered you half-buried in stone, but even more strangely, there was a hole right above you, cut in a perfectly rounded shape through the monolith's tip."

I cocked my head. For someone who lived in a place completely unknown to me, she spoke fluent Commercian. Her mastery of it, and the accent she used which I've never heard, dared to strike me more than the contents of her retelling. She continued:

"By the Great Weaver's mercy, you were still alive for your chest had just enough space to move above the rock, then…" she paused. She seemed to be recalling, the way her eyes shifted. "The sandstorm was fast approaching, so I brought you out of the stone and dragged you here along with your cylinder, and here you slept for almost an entire day."

There was silence. A great red orb? That sounded like the flash that consumed me when I had activated the Z-Augment and alloyed the Zolt-Heart's power with the Zero Drive. I tried to make any sense from what she told me, but I was stuck to eating, unable to make a thought about these strange happenings.

"I've no words." I said. "Everything about what you told me's weird. I didn't expect to be end up here, that's for sure, but where and how you found me is really, really odd."

"Is that so?"

I nodded my head.

"I don't have any explanation for all this if you're looking for one," then I paused, "except that I was trying to find my way back somewhere."

Then there was a pause between us. I was about to say one thing more, but she came first.

"Home. You said that the cylinder was to bring you back there, right?"

I knit my brows and for a brief while, our eyes met, but floated away. I didn't know she was listening that closely to me a while ago, but she was right. I expected to be there, in Zaun, in the Slums, in my room the day I saw Ajuna for the last time.

"Yeah. Home. I was on my way there."

"Piltover?"

Again, I furrowed my brows and looked at her. "How do you know about that place?"

"My family and I often traded with you northern merchants in Bel'Zhun and Kalamanda. That is how I learned to speak your tongue. And, besides, you did also mention it not long ago."

 _So you were listening_ that _closely._

"Well, I'm no Piltovian and Piltover'll never be my home." I said, my lips tightening to a bitter taste. "Let's make that one thing out of my mess clear."

"Then where are you from?"

"The Slums."

She tilted her head and squinted.

"In Zaun?" I said. "I did mention Zaun too, didn't I?"

She kept her expression.

"You know? The city below Piltover; the city of chems, Gray, Gray-pox, and unbridled experimentation? Come on, you can't know Commercian without knowing about Zaun."

She shook her head.

"I have walked in many lands, traded with many people, but I have seldom heard of Zaun. I didn't even know that it shares the same language as Piltover." She said. "So you are a Zaunian? In that case, you're the first one I have ever met."

"Zaun _ite_." I corrected, "And I wouldn't blame you for not meeting one outside of the Valshur Channel. Not a lot of us Zaunites get to see the outside world, and even fewer would want to call themselves a Zaunite once they're out."

"A Zaunite…" She said and gave it thought. "You are from a land almost entirely unknown to me. Though I've never visited it, I have heard much of Piltover, of its towering spires, luxuries, and high culture, but Zaun… Merchants hardly speak that name but I am sure I've encountered it."

"If that's the way you feel about where I'm from, then you can imagine what I feel about Shurima. I've never been here either."

Then she looked at me again, a brow tightened. "Really? You are no trader then."

"Do I look like one?" I said, and for a moment she scanned me, and stayed awkwardly at the single ridge of my hair, frizzled by sleep and the mess a while ago.

"Well, it appears you are a _total_ stranger to these lands. Why and how have you come this far?"

I sighed. I already told her that I didn't have a proper explanation for this massive failure, so I wanted to tell her everything; the Z-Drive, the Zolt Heart, and every other variable that had combined to make this giant screw-up and make it clear to the girl. But she didn't need to know. She wouldn't understand.

"As for how, I don't know, like I told you. As for why, let's just say people whom I hold very dear are waiting for me back where I'm from, and I needed to get to them as quickly as I can. Instead, something went wrong along the way and it brought me far from where I should be. So here I am."

Then, strangely, she smiled and kept that smile as the silence between us lingered. I thought at first that she was mocking me, but she looked at me, and her smile lightened until she spoke:

"It seems it is not only in company that I am not alone.

"What do you mean?"

"I am journeying home as well, for there are people who need me now more than ever. It strikes me that your path coincides mine and shares much the same purpose."

I barely smiled as she had and shook my head.

"A great enough confusion is bound to have a coincidence," I said, "and if you call this a path, I don't really know where to step next. I don't even know if I can find my way back now that I'm this far."

"Then perhaps you can come with me." She said which drew my attention. We stared for a moment, then she continued. "I can help you find a guide to lead you back to the northern coast, in Bel'Zhun or Kalamanda, where you can board a Noxian trade barge to the Sun Gates."

I looked at her, perplexed that she'd extend her kindness so deeply, when there was absolutely nothing between us.

"You're very kind to someone you know nothing about." I mumbled.

She caught my remark. I thought I offended her, but she smirked.

"Like you, I once wound up in a land far from where I belong. I would have been lost completely if not for a stranger's help. He wasn't all too different from you; I found his body half-buried as well, but instead of stone, he was stuck in snow, and, like you, he greeted me with much suspicion, so much that he almost killed me when he woke up."

She smiled dumbly at the floor, almost as if to laugh, but it faded and she continued.

"That man became my teacher and a good friend. He helped me find my way despite not knowing me at all."

She looked at me.

"Perhaps now it is my turn to do the same for a stranger who was lost as I had been long ago."

I bowed my head and turned away from her. I had nothing to say to that. The kind of help I needed wasn't about helping me find my way. It was about making the Z-Drive work again. Making _everything_ work again.

But did that mean she couldn't help me?

I had finished eating my strip of meat as she spoke, then I set my bowl aside, shifted my knees and rested my arm on one of them.

We were quiet. She had just finished eating too.

In Zaun, we could barely afford to help anyone we happen to find lost or unconscious. Hard enough to get by on our own. But this girl was on her urgent way, travelling, and she had offered me a drink and a meal, and brought me away from a storm.

And, her story about that man… Why would she have any reason to lie about that?

I really was in a different place.

We were both finished eating. In our quiet, I fiddled with the amulet mom and dad gave me until I turned it round. I read once again what was written on the back , with the sapphire of its front glinting like an cobalt wisp through the copper glow.

The girl tied up her pouches, returned them to her bag, and then slung it on.

"We must be going. The sandstorm has long faded and time passes with threat than with welcome."

"What do you mean?" I said, looking up to her as she stood. Her brows lowered.

"There are malignant powers gathering among the dunes. It is too much for me to explain to you now when we should no longer be resting. We must reach Greater Shurima as soon as we can, and you too must leave in that time. There is not a day for us to waste. Come."

I furrowed my brows. All so suddenly, she spoke of 'powers' outside, things that demanded explanations, but I didn't ask for them.

"Wait," I said, getting on my feet as she did and slinging the water skin on, "What about your other stuff?

"Those?" She said, stopping to look at them. She tightened the side of her lip as her eyes kept an almost worried squint. "I guess I will have to leave them. None of them really impressed me anyway."

"Okay then…"

"I can always make more." She shrugged. "What about your cylinder? Will you be bringing it?"

Her question broke me so suddenly from the figurines she made.

"Oh." I stammered. The "cylinder", what she called it, still rested there, busted yet glowing. It's a burden now. But the crystal.

I came forward and reached my hand into the lustrous glow cradled within the device. I felt its warmth, its solidity, and its facets and wrinkles. And I heard the song; slow, chiming like a lullaby… Irresistible.

"I have never seen a crystal so beautiful." The girl said. "It is like a piece of the sun."

"Sun?"

"Yes." She said, "The sun that rules the desert and bestows it heat. The crystal seems to be a gift from it… or one of its fallen tears."

Sun. Where have I heard that word before?

I picked up the crystal and took it out from the broken Zero Drive, leaving its riveted iron casing and hextronic modules into a shadow as I stowed the crystal into my pocket. So there was my greatest invention, a broken heap of glass, metal, and hextronics. I rested my palm on it, caressing its side, knowing that it was broken beyond repair.

I took the broken Z-Drive and clipped it to my belt.

It seemed I still hoped.

If there was any chance that I could repair the drive, then there was not a second to waste.

"You will be bringing that as well?" The girl said.

"Have to." I stood up as I secured the drive's fasteners to a belt hole on my right side. "Like I said, it's my only way home." I turned to her. "Let's get going."

She lifted a brow to what I said, but instead of asking me another question, she nodded her head. "Come."

We turned for the exit where some faint bluish light emanated.

 **III**

I sniffed. Then I inhaled.

The air.

It did not whip my lungs or clogged at the back of my nostrils. It did not force me into a coughing fit. It did not remind me of home. It was refreshing, welcoming… _clean_. I imagined this was what walking inside a breather pipe felt.

But I was in no breather pipe. This was the world.

The air visited my skin, brushed its fingers through my hair, and lightened my lungs in a cool embrace, and I stopped, almost gazing, when we finally got out of the cave.

Blue above me.

Sky.

Cobalt.

I was outside. I was above the ground. I was where the Piltovians thrived. I was in a _world_ , in a _land_ , standing atop it with my two feet, with nothing but air above me. There was _nothing_ above me, not the cliffs nor the pipes, the gondolas and the cultivairs, nor the Pilties and their white towers. There was just me and this girl, until I saw a great shadow to my left and huge rocky wall, bathed in a dim bluish light that came from the sky.

We were in this crater with a monolith standing at its center like some sort of spike-shaped slab hewn straight from a cliff. I never thought stone could form so perfectly like this.

It was a sight so alien to me, but that said, everything I felt and witnessed was astonishing as they were strange. So I felt a rush climb into me, seeing all these things I have not once in my life seen for myself. They were not just sights. They were experiences.

I ran to the nearest crater wall, climbing up on the heads and rocks, feeling the sand-coated stoneheads on my naked palms, and pretending I was climbing through the many pipes of Zaun to see what was truly above.

"Wait!" I heard the girl shout. "Where are you going?! Hey! Stranger! Wait!"

But she was far now. I hobbled up the wall, energized by my enthusiasm, until I saw the border of the crater grow closer until I pulled myself up at the edge.

There I was.

Vermillion beyond me.

Sun.

Copper.

I stood at the crater's edge before this carpet of sand, as if I were a tiny boy standing in an opened sack of cream-dyed powder, with this round golden blob too bright to look at, rising a yard or two above the edge.

Sun. That was the sun, that twinkling blur beneath the chem-ridden layers of the Gray. It was like a chem-bulb, a scone, or the yolk of a cliff-shrike egg; perfectly round and large, like an eye of some augmented leviathan looking over the plane of the world. Its heat beamed over my face and through my eyes. I clenched them shut. A wind passed between my hairs and my fingers. I lifted my arms, hoping to catch the coolness of the draft as I breathed in pure and unviolated vigor into my scarred lungs.

I stared for a moment into this new world, a world none of us Lost Children could ever see down in one of the deepest bellies of Zaun. Never mind those chem-lights and breather pipes, those frail mimics of a warm sun and a clean sky. This was the real deal.

This was Shurima.

I wondered what that name meant. I wanted to ask.

"Wait!"

I heard steps climbing behind me, hard-soled boots on solid rock, and the pitters of calloused hands pulling a body upward.

I turned, the sky and sun behind me, and saw the girl among the stones, the swathes of her coat fluttering with each hop of her climb. She looked at me as I did to her, and she stopped climbing, standing still on one big rock-head. We were both slightly out of breath. We were quiet for a moment.

So there I stood, at the edge, by the changing sky above.

And there she was, on the wall, by the still earth below.

The sapphire glint of my amulet winked. Her bronze headpiece glinted.

Suddenly, in this silent pause, I remembered that drawing in the cave.

I wondered what it meant.

* * *

AN: This chapter really took me out for a walk. I enjoyed finally writing the opening dynamic between them, and I dearly hope it is substantial and that it's not over or underdone. I made many drafts for their conversation in the cave and this so far seems to be the one that I'm most comfortable with. The ending of this chapter is something I've imagined for a very long time and I am so glad that I finally got to show it to you guys. I hope it has struck you as much as it had struck me. Suffice to say, this isn't the only parallel which Taliyah and Ekko has.

Thank you so much to those who have faved, followed, and reviewed so far despite my long time of inactivity. I'm working on this and another story of mine back and forth, so expect slow updates, but I am doing my best to write them up as much as I can. Rest assured, I will still be updating my stories no matter the pace.

If there is anything wrong you'd like to point out, or if you have any questions, please feel free to mention them. Feedback matters so much to me as always, and I am truly grateful to those who have taken the time to leave a review.

Thank you again and see you on the next one!

 _Inputted Meanings_ _:_

The Nasijii (Taliyah's tribe's dialect of Shuriman) sentences at beginning ("Ehr-taa! Ehr-taa! Ofs-olch ofs!") are derived from jumbled up Hebrew.( אתה ער! אתה ער! סוף כל סוף/ Ata er! Ata er! Sof chol sof!). Translated to English is: "You're awake! You're awake! At long last!"

 _Commercian_ is a term I made up which refers to the language Zaunites and Piltovians speak. I imagine there are "upper/formal" and "lower/informal" versions of the language. Taliyah was speaking fluently in the "upper" form, the ones that Piltovians mainly use among each other and with their customers, hence why Ekko was impressed when she was explaining how she found him.


	10. Tremors

**Tremors**

He stood there on the crater's edge above, a silhouette against the waking beams of dawn, and there I watched him, among the shadows draping the cragged walls below. His dark countenance and his brown eyes... if not for the clothes he wore, the device he brought, and the circumstances that continued to shroud him, he would appear to me a part of this land, a Shuriman, hardened by the desert sun like a brick of clay.

He was a stranger, to me and to this land, and while I had chased him, I thought he was escaping me for fear, suspicion, or malice. But then his dazed look lingered. It assured me that he had no intent to leave.

I felt that he was about to speak.

But then, his eyes turned to the sky and, seemingly, it searched the heavens for all their corners, settling only when he looked to the horizon beyond, his gaze as far and wide as the golden eve of dawn and the breeze of the desert morning that bathed him altogether.

 _He truly is new to this land. Like a goat leashed to a new caravan, he chases the sights it offers._

A new land engulfs the senses and opens the ears to its many tales, and I too gazed as he did, to the vast grasslands of Valoran, to the forested hills of Ionia, and the snowy woods of the Freljord, but more numerous than my memories of worldly allure, were the thoughts of home, and it was then that I noticed a piercing thread through the thin mesh of wonderment over his eyes, a thread that followed all those who did not belong. Sorrow.

I climbed up, leveling myself with the stranger, until he and I stood there at the crater's edge, on the boundary where the powdery dunes met its dark basalt.

He was as still as a long sunken statue lifted out from the shadow of its tomb. An inexplicable relief held me. Him remaining after I had helped him proved that there was truth to his strangeness to Shurima and that there was some decency through his grief and suspicion. I felt content to stand there with him.

He stayed as quiet and nameless as the winds with the sun to stare back at him. Then, he sighed, so deep that his chest rose with his body and his eyes shut. When he was done, not much changed, for his eyes could not leave the light and air of the unraveling day, and I could not say anything to him. The world was speaking to the stranger. I found it rude to interrupt this exchange.

The azirite gleam of the morning sun was peeking out of the shaded tapestry of the Great Weaver. Through the foothills of our tribe's wandering and the snowy valleys of my solitude, the eve of a new day was the herald of hope, a reminder of second chances, and the deliver of an opportune tomorrow ever-promised. Before my eyes, it was a constant beauty. To his, it was a new one. I could not imagine gazing for the first time into something that I had seen virtually all my waking days, but then I remembered when I saw and touched snow over the valleys of Ionia. There, it was a constant part of life; coldness, harshness, and the threat of ravaging avalanches, but in Shurima, there was nothing in this world more wonderful to come across; purity, gentleness, and the fragility of falling snowflakes. I understood him. I would gaze too.

He turned to me and I caught the winks of the sapphire of his amulet and the flutter of his upright hair to the wind. He appeared as if he was going to say something, but then he looked away, as if a regretful thought passed him and sailed into the rising sun. I supposed I should speak.

"I thought you were going to leave me," I began, "but I see now that all this is truthfully new to you."

"I've left enough people. I'm not about to do that again." His eyes stayed forward. "And yeah, all this is new to me. Where I'm from, there's no sand, no sky, no clean air, _no space_. We live by the edge of stony cliffs so massive that turning your head all the way up doesn't help in finding where they really start 'cause of all the bridges, pipes, and platforms stitching them together. There's no sun there. Just chem-powered mimics of it that open in a flash. Doesn't come close to the real thing."

He lifted an arm. Beams streaked between the callouses of his finger-sides. The sun was in his palm.

"Who would've thought. Light is much better when it comes to you slowly; on its own, without flicking a switch..."

It was easy to imagine his home, for there were plenty of cliffs in Ionia and the Freljord as well as the people who lived between them. Everyday they would bask beneath their shadows, save for when the sun was directly overhead. But I found the other details of his home almost unthinkable: no sky and no clean air, for they followed all my travels. But I was wrong. Such a place was familiar to me and it was a violent memory. I remembered drowning off the Ionian coast.

Then, again, I understood him. I would long for air too.

"The Pilties and upsiders were right. The surface is wider than everything anyone's ever known in Zaun, wide enough to make you realize how far your eyes can actually see. It's unbelievable. You can light a candle a hundred leagues away and I'm sure I could spot its flame."

The stranger knelt down and sifted his fingers through the sand. He had a tenderly spilling pile rising along his palm.

"Here, above, all along, while we can hardly breathe below." He looked at me. "Feels like I can run in one direction and never stop for a year. How far does all this sand stretch?"

"Far enough that the dunes are all one can see in a week's travel on camel back."

He looked up towards me. Master Yasuo once told me that, sometimes, my curiosity caused my face look as still of thought as a tree gecko. The stranger's own curiosity was doing the same. "How is this much even possible?"

"The Great Weaver weaves many of Her greatest patterns in threads of indigo and amber; the sea and the sands; the sun and the sky; time and space. The dunes are but one of her grandest designs, the thin veil that serves to dress all stone beneath, but Shurima is not all sand."

I looked at him, and remembered wrinkly fingers ruffling my hair and wise, nigh-eternal eyes squinting from a half-toothless smile.

 _A good answer makes the eyes go wider, little one, that is why Babajan always sees yours so open!_

I saw those same eyes in the stranger. I heard Babajan's words through my own. She always told me of the day I'd recount the knowledge of our tribe to my own children, but it seems strangers have always been a good practice for that.

"Great Weaver?"

"She Who Wefts the Threads of Fate and Warps the Strings of Creation. In my tribe's tongue, She is known as Wehaya, and She has existed for as long as the songs, dances, and tales of our ancestors. She is our guardian, the mover of all nature, and everyday we walk in Her Tapestry of stone and earth and pray for Her blessings and signs." I looked to the horizon. "All that you see now is the craft of Her earthen fingers, and all that happens, happens because She wove their threads to be so, thus the fate of all people are threaded together, no matter how distant or strange they may be, for a purpose only She can know."

"Is that why you helped me?"

I looked at him, nodded, and smiled a little, for he understood quickly. For we were all woven, all help was help to the entire tapestry, and in effect, it returns to oneself.

"Mostly." I looked to the sun. It was more than half-way through now. Gold began to seep from its amber halo. "Perhaps I have left enough people as well."

I could feel him looking to me, and for a moment, I glanced to him. His brown eyes glistened like bronze with the shine of the dawn, such that I saw the reflection of mine. He was young perhaps as young as I was, or slightly older, for our height were not obviously apart, and I noticed faded outlines of a white painting on his face: two triangles that spanned from his chin to his forehead, meeting at their tips by the bridge of his nose. A mark.

"Well... Thanks. I mean it this time, whoever you are."

I turned myself to him and put a hand to my chest. "Taliyah of the Nasaaj, daughter of Tal and Yannah."

"Is that really how people introduce themselves? You say your parents' names with your own?"

"This is a courteous way. We honor our mothers and fathers by invoking their names alongside ours. It helps one to remember that people shall hold your parents accountable for the things you do, be they right or wrong."

"Wow, that's a lot of... pressure. Alright, and did you say _of the_ Nasaaj or _Ofda_ nasaaj? Is that supposed to be your family name?"

" _Of the_ Nasaaj." I could not stop a smirk. This was not the first time. "We do not have family names like the peoples of Valoran, for the tribe is the family of families, and so the tribe comes first. Nasaaj is my tribe. In our tongue, it means Those Who Weave, for we raise goats and camels in the desert, forage for dye ingredients in the oases, and make a living from the fabrics we make."

The curious look of his returned. "I'm guessing there are other 'tribes' in this huge place."

"Yes. Some nomads and wanderers, like ours, others farmers of the oases and fishermen of the coasts, and others... hunters and raiders. The tribes know each other mainly because of trade and most of us have shared histories. People will often think of you with your tribe in mind, and even a person who achieves nothing can be great by virtue of his tribe's honor."

"Sounds a lot like a gang."

"A gang?"

"What counts for a tribe in Zaun. Think of it like a family, except not everyone is related, and anyone can join so long as they prove themselves to the gang. They protect you provided that you'd be there for everyone else when they need you."

A family where not everyone is related... It reminded me of ship crews and guilds. The markings on his face then began to mean much. A mark of where he belonged.

"Are you part of one?"

"Yeah." He turned to the horizon. "The Lost Children." Sunlight gleamed to his face. He did not say anything more.

"It must be an honor to be part of a gang as it is to a tribe."

"Um, well..." He paused for a moment then smiled. "See, being in a gang isn't something everyone thinks highly about, even if you help around and don't start trouble. There are gangs who do shady stuff, and that's what most people think about, but we're not one of those. We're just kids, stray sumpsnipes with the coddled ones, who help each other out, the way you did to me. We got our own way of sharing our names, and it's nothing too special but, since I'm here,"

He turned to me and pat a hand to his own chest. "Ekko of the L.C., son of Wyeth Coppersmith and Inna Taylor." I cocked my head, and, almost as if prepared, he said: "E-K-K-O. Not _echo_ , like, echo-echo-echo-echo."

I looked at him. I said nothing. An awkward sting grew from our looks, then, not knowing why, I grinned then hicced. He tilted his head, more perplexed.. My grin widened. Then, my chest thumped, my cheeks lifted, and I felt giggles in my throat. I began laughing.

Ekko looked at me, unsure as to what to say, surprised.

"Why are you..."

I looked at him, face contorted in great and hopping grin, preparing to answer, but then, I saw a pebble by his foot roll. My weaving was acting on its own. My eyes peeled open like a goat kicked from behind, then I straightened myself up but, as I tried to stop myself from laughing, I made a guttural heaving sound, like the sound one makes as they thrust their head out of the water. As this was happening, I tried to speak:

"It's just that," _heave_ , "I've never," _heave._

I saw more pebbles moving by his feet and I felt the encirclement of pebbles near mine.

 _Control._

"Heard an outsider introduce himself in," _heave._

I began to bite my tongue to stifle the laughter but it continued.

 _Control. Control._

"The Shuriman way." _Heave._

 _Control._

Then he did something he should not have. He began laughing along. I have never laughed along with a stranger for a great time, and now, it was difficult to stop myself. I held to my stomach, and reached my hand out, for I felt more tremors, a vibration that invaded my soles and trembled my fingers. My grin remained as I showed him my palm to indicate him to stop, but my laughter could not convince him to.

"Stop!" I said, still giggling. "Stop it!"

 _Control. Control. Control._

"Why?! You're the one who started it!"

"You must!"

But it remained comical to him and to a part of me. Threads began to wound on their own. I could feel them, loose from the control of my fingers, weaving patterns beneath. Pebbles as large as goat heads began to move about, but their sound was lost to our laughter. I tucked my hands deep beneath my shoulders, as if I could stop the sensation of weaving from my own fingers, but I could do nothing else now but bow my head down. I bit my tongue down, but my laughter pushed through, I looked to him, still smiling and laughing, I pleaded.

"Stop!"

 _Control, control,control,control._

"But-"

"STOP!"

I screamed. I swiped my arms across. The threads let loose.

Columns of earth jutted out behind me like jagged fists. Sand rose and billowed with the upward strike of woven basalt. A shattering sound cracked into my ears. Threads whipped and lashed in all directions, lost from my control. I could feel the stones crush behind me.

I had lost balance. I fell on my knees. The laughter was gone. All that was left was my breathing and the fading surge of sand.

I embraced myself, tucking my fingers beneath my shoulders, for I did not want to feel them. In the screen of sand raised by the earth, I could not see the stranger, Ekko. I did not hear his voice. I could not bear to look up.

I pulled my hands out. The sand began to fall back. The clearness of day returned. Dry red streaks on my dusted palms watched back. Reminders.

Then, as the sands cleared, I heard Ekko's breaths. He stood farther away from me, sand dusting his clothes. His chest rose and fell quickly.

Our eyes met. No words left either of us. He stared, eyes widened no longer in curiosity, but in pure shock. In fear. I tucked my hands back inside my shoulders and looked away from him but saw only the earth I had rose. It stretched from behind me and extended into the crater wall, like a crown of spikes and columns with I at its center. Their shadows speared away from the sun. The tips of stones dripped with the water from below. Tears.

"You're... a hex-caster."

I did not say anything. I had learned long ago that apologies did little to fear. My threads fell all around me, threads he could not see or feel, and I remained on the ground. I remembered the Nivim and those before them in my journeys, until I recalled the first one. Mother.

I waited for him to run away.

But, I felt something, a prick beneath my toes. Another tremor.

 _No. It is over. There cannot be any more movement from the threads._

I felt it, a distantly tugged thread. Then, I realized, it was not my own.

I looked to the direction. It was to the west, opposite the sun, and far away from the crater. I could see its origin past the arc of the monolith. A raging cloud of sand was billowing in the distance, and in the seconds as I looked at it, I felt the tremors grow slightly stronger, like the pluck of a string subtly speeding up.

I stood. My eyes could not leave it, and I sensed the stranger look to that direction as well.

The sand cloud was a trail. Something was approaching us, and judging from the amount of sand being shot up, it was large, perhaps as large as a galley, coming full speed and rending earth as it came towards us.

I only knew of one thing that could do this, and I have heard its rumors so often that I could instantly recall.

Rek'Sai, the Queen of all Xer'Sai, Undertaker of Caravans, and Terror of the Sands.

But we were far, _far_ from the Sai'Khaleek to the south-west where she was known to dwell. This was something unknown to the rumors and legends of the tribes. Something I have never seen in all my travels.

It was coming closer.

* * *

AN: Can't keep going without a little conflict, I suppose. Most parts of this chapter wrote itself, that is, I didn't plan out some details but they turned out well when I wrote them. I loved writing this chapter and I hope I've done their developing interactions well enough, for I have more and more planned out for them. I do not want to tarry too long on details of the setting and their background and I'd rather variate the pace.

 _Inputted Meanings:_

"Wehaya" is an anagram of the articulated form of the tetragrammaton (YHWH). Whether the concept of the Great Weaver is a personal monotheistic god as in the Abrahamic religions or a cosmic force of nature, is something the story will explore moving forward.

Again, thank you to all those who reviewed, faved, and followed. This story has been gaining quite a bit of traction lately and I have been enjoying writing its chapters, such that I have a stupid smile on my face after writing them. Maybe it's a smile I'd like to share.

Thank you again, and see you guys in the next one.


	11. Towards a Guide

**Towards a Guide**

It was flaying the tapestry of the dunes, a tempest that spewed earth and sand in sundering fury. As the shadows shrunk beneath the waking gaze of the dawning sun, there the object rushed like a cloud spirit, of an avalanche mantled in the beige powders it hurled, sending distant ripples that strummed the earthen threads beneath. I felt them from beyond the other side of the crater. It was the farthest disturbance I have ever felt, more so than the landslides that hewed the great Freljordian mountains.

The power it forced among the stones reached me through that great distance as when a needle tugs the entire fabric when it pricks the edge, and those that sent the most violent rivulets, were stones that shattered. What came before us in that distance sheared them as steel through tightly packed hides. But it was not the shattering that sent the tremors through the threads beneath me. There was another force, alloyed into the destructive snaps of the stone, and when I felt it again, I gasped, for as I focused, I felt far-away ripples of threads twisting and curving, flowing like storm waves through a backdrop of snaps and shears.

It was weaving the stone apart.

Ekko's voice broke me away.

"What is that?"

"I do not know."

My breath was taken. The xer'sai were known to lurk beneath the earth in the bony plains of the Sai'Khaleek, but xer'sai did not wander the northern wastes, much less reveal themselves above the ground as they stalked their prey, and no legends of them spoke of wielding powers like mine. This was no xer'sai and only one thing was certain to me. It wove stone as I did.

I looked at the stranger, his sight fixated on that distant yet approaching cloud. The deformed patterns of uncontrollable threads I summoned from the earth, for a while, withdrew from our memory in the face of this sudden threat.

"I have not seen a force of that size in all my time in Shurima."

 _Not since Vekaura._ I had thought I would not have to see a power in the scale of what I had witnessed so early after I had left that town's ruins. I was wrong. But Ekko did not need to know of that now.

"It looks like it's heading straight for the monolith. Or us."

"We cannot tell for certain, but it is better we evade it, for most things bearing immense power in Shurima harbor no good signs."

"What now?"

"It is coming from the west where my destination lies. If we go east, towards the sun, at this moment, we will only go farther from Greater Shurima, farther from safety, so we must either move to the south or the north."

For I had talked without considering the stranger's knowledge of Shuriman travel, he looked at me, unable to question or remind me of what I had so recklessly shown him. The approaching cloud stole the attention it once merited.

"It's coming closer."

He did not need to tell me. The tremble that ran through the threads were now shock waves, running through the tapestry as rapidly and abruptly as the candlelight that flickers in the wind. From an enigmatic and distant speck, it had become a blotting surge formed from the powders and splinters mangled from the strings of dune and threads of earth. Its power was greater than anything I could muster.

There was no time. I had to decide. If we are to engage in a prolonged chase with the approaching object, assuming that we were its target, then we must choose north, for there caravans mostly roamed, shipping goods from the upper coasts and weary travelers to their destination. South of here was what I had described to the stranger: weeks of sand and the slim chance of an oases, but south would bring us a slight distance closer to Greater Shurima. But there was no way of knowing the two apart for now, as there were no stars and the desert fowl whose flight marked the locations of rivers, coasts, and well-known oases were repelled by yesterday's storm. The dunescape had not a mountain nor coast to discern our direction, and now, as I often did, I wished that I could afford the expensive tools of the Noxian sailors and the Piltovian explorers.

 _Oh, Great Weaver, help me to decide._

Then, as I looked down to my feet in thought, there I noticed my shadow stretching into the sand and towards the crater. Towards the monolith. I looked up to its massive form, and noticed, from where I stood, that I could not see its own shadow, for it was positioned in a way that was perfectly aligned to the rising sun. Sunlight struck its arced pinnacle in a flawlessly reflected gleam.

I realized now. The side of the monolith facing us was parallel to the eastern sun, and thus, the monolith's arcing tip was pointing to either north or south. There was no way of knowing. Time could not allow it. But at least following the point of its arc would not be a completely ignorant guess.

 _Great Weaver, please let it be right_.

"Taliyah, uh, what are we going to do?"

The force I felt was immeasurable. The sound of rock and powder cracking, crumbling, and billowing in upward hurls reached our ears. This was weaving, a force of creation intermingled so closely with destruction. A force that brought fear.

"Taliyah."

To the direction pointed by the monolith, I faced. I had made my decision. The deformed hanks of stone behind me began to crumble.

"Taliyah!"

Ekko turned to me, and he stopped, eyes widened, and watched the earth I had woven out of the ground dissipate on its own, like pottery breaking quietly to the sway of the wind. As it did so, I walked to him.

"There is a way for us to escape."

"Well, we actually need that right about now." He said as he took a glance at the object, frantic that the first malevolent sight since his waking approached him. "That thing is-"

"But you must trust that I will not hurt you."

Taken from a glance, he paused and stared in the way someone had heard something he didn't understand. Threads wrapped around the anxious twirls of my finger. Then, wordlessly, he nodded.

The twirling was anxious no more. I struck a heel against the stone beneath my feet. Out jutted a slab that lurched up and then propped before us. Ekko jumped back, yelping and taking a face no different from when my laughter summoned the earth.

While I mouthed a quiet prayer to the Great Weaver, I stepped on my slab, raising a tightly inclined mound of earth at the center as I did so. It divided the slab the way a slope divides the two humps of a camel; one for the driver, another for a passenger. To the front of that mound, I stood. There was space for the stranger behind, and as I got to my space, a glance to the object showed me that it was close enough that it was no mere speck, but a wall of whirling winds, threatening to cradle the other side of the crater.

When once its power pricked my toes, it now rumbled through my body, rolling like war drums. I felt the threads I wove shake. I could not focus.

"Get on!" I said between gritted teeth. The slab shook on its own, like a thin boat disturbed by the strong push of conqueror turtles, but there was that curious tree gecko look of Ekko toward the slab.

"By the Gray..."

"There is no time!"

Then he looked at me and, after a pause, noticed the space set for him. Sense at long last found him. He climbed up to his space and held both arms to the mound separating us. The unfamiliar weight upon my slab, combined with the approaching object's earth-shaking force, hesitated my control over the earthen threads as when a finger fumbles in looping a thread through a needle's eye.

"What is this thing supps- _woa- woah!_ "

I thrust my hands back but the tremors pulled and yanked at my arms. The slab began to glide drunkenly through the sands, tilting left and right, and almost threatening to hurl us to one side, if not for my constant resistance towards the other weaver's interference. Ekko gripped hard at the mound between us and his struggle to keep his feet on the slab made it no easier for me. I clenched my eyes shut. I had to balance our weight. I needed control.

 _Control._

The wall of dust and flaked earth was as far as a ralsiji's sprint from the opposite side of the crater.

 _Balance, Little Sparrow_

Wind seeped into my ears. My knees bent carefully, and, shifting my arms, I found a better center of gravity. A deep breath came before the transition of roaring winds. The threads soothed to the weave of my fingers. We were moving faster. We were gaining distance, and from the changing weight of Ekko, I could tell that he was looking back. I opened my eyes and set them forward the dunes seemingly speeding past us. Sands began to rise upward from the surfing slab's trail, but compared to the sand billowed by the object, it was a puff of air to a howling storm.

But that howling storm grew fainter as I surfed the slab forward, and fainter it faded as we climbed a great dune. The object's weaving came no closer. We were not followed, and this we both realized in silence as I calmed our speed and passed rows of the sun-basked dunes whose grains sifted to wandering winds. I could not tell Ekko's expression, for I wove the slab forward in front of him, but the slight shifts of weight that the threads allowed me to feel told me that he was looking left and right.

We had escaped the unknown object, but not what I had done. So that silence of relief we shared, had now become mere silence, and nothing more.

There came a point that his searching eyes stopped and looked forward, where the threads could not let me feel the tiny turns of his eyes and to where his sight lay. I could not know if he looked to the muted amber vastness of Shurima and the equally vast azure sky above, or if it was to the windy flutters of my short hair and the subtle movements of my weaving fingers. For the memory of my sudden laughter and equally sudden weaving rendered in this silence, somehow, knowing where he truly looked mattered. But the once-quiet winds roared in our ears, and they allowed him no questions, and I, no answers.

* * *

AN: I suppose this is where the 'adventure' part of the story begins to kick in a bit more. We had a lot of dialog prior to this chapter and among my main mistakes is using dialog as the only means of development in my stories, so prepare for more movement is all I can say. Also, notice the short length of the recent chapters. Since there are now two characters in the limelight, I am compelled to cut some brevity to help keep the story going without delving too much on individual and shared details in the way that I did in earlier chapters. But don't worry, this does not diminish what I have in mind, and I felt quite comfortable reading it the way it is. I can only hope you were too. Sometimes, you just have to save the other details for later, in the right time, and in the right place.

All said, I enjoyed writing this chapter. Moments of smiling dumbly while the scene makes itself are something to live for, as well as the many, many frustrating bouts of revision and editing that goes into polishing the scene. There are many more happenings, mysteries, and eventual answers to come that I have already laid out, and I am excited to share them with you all as I try my best to write them daily. I project that this story will reach 80k-100k given what I have already outlined, and I plan to keep things steady, understandable, and succinct enough that everything is said the way they should have been, nothing more and nothing less.

So again, thank you to those who have given feedback and who continue to read this story. I am grateful for the appreciation all of you have shown towards this story. Not a lot of people are interested in shipping Ekko and Taliyah, but I am glad those who do enjoy this story. I hope that I have written Taliyah and Ekko accurately and that they talk, act, and think like themselves, and I truly hope that, I can teach a lesson or two through their adventures together and the roles they'll play in their fast changing world.

Thank you again, and see you in the next one.


	12. Unspoken

**Unspoken**

Dawn now dwindled. Amber drained away from the desert horizon and azure had long taken its place in the Tapestry.

We passed an hour of quiet travel. There was not a sound but the sifts and blows of sand rending across the protrusion of my woven slab. The winds from the blue sky whispered in our ears whenever we climbed over the dunes, and roared whenever we descended their slopes. We shared no words, Ekko and I. His weight had ceased shifting and he was resigned to facing in a single direction: forward. Maybe to the space before us. Maybe to me. It did not matter, or at least that was what I wanted to tell myself.

We have long left the monolith, but I continued to drive the slab forward, else we lose a sure bearing to the already unsure north or south. I needed a clue, a sign, for much needed direction, and so I did not shift our course or halted to assess it and inevitably hear his thoughts. Besides, I was not ready to speak. I had much to make of what happened on my own as well.

There were instances in our travel that the winds had mellowed just quietly and timely enough for us to hear each other. In spite of that, we remained quiet. He had nothing to say though he had much time to compose a question, but, to be fair, neither did I, so there was a silence deeper than the silence of the dune and wind, and through it, I became certain that our thoughts were much the same. Thoughts about that approaching cloud and my reckless weaving. The weight of the earthen threads were lighter compared to them, and weaving these very threads helped me to forget, and so, as the winds yet again muted, I was content not to say anything, just as he was.

We glided down a slope of sand and landed on a patch of flat earth draped in the shadow of an adjacent dune. As the earthen threads of my slab met the bare stone of the world, I was once again connected to the bedrock.

There was a muffled yet coursing surge beneath. Tears. Water.

The slab stopped, rocking gently left and right, before coming to a rigid halt by the edge of the bare earth. I stepped out. Ekko's steps followed down, but I did not turn to him as I knelt and spread my palm over the rugged stone. Coarse grains of stray sands pressed into the skin of my hand. I reached for the threads beneath. Deep within the bedrock, rushed a vein of water, worming through stones unfamiliar to its moist touch. It was young, not among the seasonal course of underground streams. It was yet another hemorrhage forced out of the temporal flow, like the one which had lead me to the monolith, and to Ekko.

The doings of a greater power, such ruptures all lead south west, to Greater Shurima, to the Mother of Life, beneath the Frayed City. The Capital of Old.

"We are no longer lost." I stood up and looked at Ekko. His eyes wanted to tell much, but his lips remained shut. I felt a slight relief, but that only made me realize, that I truly was not prepared to hear his words, so I turned away. "Stay here."

I climbed up a nearby dune, my boots leaving an upward trail of steps. At its peak, I stood, and before me stretched the Central Wastes, a land of beige, visited mostly by the shadows of cloud and dune, like spots on dusted cheetah fur. The violent trail of sand and earth that once approached us was nowhere to be seen. Its waves of shattering and weaving were finally lost to my senses. We were truly not followed. We were safe.

I sipped a relieved breath and looked up to the sky.

Thank you, Great Weaver.

Assured that we were alone again, I descended back to the bare earth. Ekko was staring at the slab that had carried us out of the monolith.

"It did not follow us." I said. He turned to me. "Water flows beneath the stone and toward our destination. We will be traveling to the south west from now on, and, with the Weaver's blessing, we will find an oasis, town or caravan to rest on our way there."

But he did not say anything back. His mouth opened, seeming to start a word, but remained quiet in its hesitation, as if he had composed a great deal to say but could not find where to begin. His eyes met with mine. He intended to speak to me, of me, but, with the side of my lips tightened, I looked away from him and to the shadowed earth.

The silence persisted. Neither of us could breathe a word of what remained unspoken.

There was no need to bear this, so I walked forward, to the slab, leaving him behind me.

"We should watch the skies for sandstorms and the flight of water mayas. They will lead us to a stream or a watering hole. There, we can rest for a time and drink as much as we like, or perhaps even encounter a resting caravan or a town."

"I..."

When he began, I stopped.

"I didn't know you were a hex-caster."

The slab lay before me, its bottom lodged firmly to the earth. A sigh. It seemed the silence finally broke.

"I would have let you know eventually, but not... in the way that I had."

I turned to him. His eyes were as still as mine, anticipating, and full, so full, of questions that did not feel easy to me, but I expected them, so I wanted this to be over quickly, and say what I needed to say.

"I-I did not mean to—"

"That—"

Mouths closed. Our stumble was like that of two people tripping into each other. The side of my lip creased and my fingers curled inward and rubbed. It was awkward enough that we had to speak about this. Now one of us had to prevail through the awkward fumble. It would be him.

"That-that explains so much: you digging me out of stone, those little sculptures in the cave, and that drawing on the wall, you're the one who carved it..."

I figured he should know now.

"And the bands on your collar."

Ekko cocked his head, brows weighed. "What?" A pause. "Wait, you mean-" He reached a hand behind him and I could tell, from the widening of his eyes, that he touched those bands I had woven to repair the damage I had caused on his tunic. He crossed his arms under, took off his shirt, and held it up by both hands. He inspected my repair. An intense tingle struck my face. He glanced at me.

"How did this—"

"I was careless—"

My words were sharp as they were sudden, and there was yet another stumble, so he looked at me and his look stayed. It demanded that I speak first.

"I was weaving you out of the stone where I found you buried and I became too excited, too impatient, and the fabric was stuck but I couldn't wait, so it tore apart! But it was never my intention to tear it; it was all just some... accident. Yes, an accident. Like what had happened earlier, but I did not mean it, I swear! I shouldn't have-have... undressed you and damaged what was yours!"

He was unmoved by my burst of words.

"So you took this off of me and fixed it?"

Something flushed warmly through my cheeks. Was it shame, embarrassment, pride? I did not know.

"I had to. It would be wrong to let it be broken when I can fix it."

He said nothing else, but simply nodded, and his eyes remained drawn to the stonework upon his tunic. His fingers touched each band, curious, intrigued, as he examined my craft, and I did not know if I should be flattered by his fascination or embarrassed that he now knew of what I had done. It was safer to assume the latter. Anyone would be offended by a stranger breaking their things.

"I apologize."

He looked at me.

"In my tribe, we hold clothing to be dear. They are a part of us just as they are a part of our way of life. Though I repaired my damage, it still stands that I tore what was not mine." I looked away. "That is one reason why I did not tell you of my abilities, my stone-weaving, immediately. There would have been better and less sudden ways to reveal it."

"Stone-weaving, huh?" He lowered the tunic."I still don't get it. You didn't want to tell me about your hex-casting, or, er, stone-weaving, because of my shirt?"

"No, it is not only that. I..." My eyes wandered. "I do not know if Zaunites like you fear my abilities, for I have never met one as you know, and there are many in this world who fear what I can do, even when I do not intend harm. They run away." I glanced at him, my eyes darting back as quickly as the momentum of my words. "I did not want you to risk you running out all alone into the dunes merely because of fear. I did not want you to be afraid of me."

His brows knit. I wanted to hide my face or resume our journey, and so I pulled myself away, hoping that we would not speak of this again, but then, I noticed him smile. I looked back, and as I did, that smile hopped up into a chuckle. His eyes shined. He began laughing.

"Afraid?! You think I'm afraid?! Are you kidding?! That... that was amazing! This,"he pulled up the collar bands, "is amazing!" Then, he swiftly fit into his shirt, walked forward, and gestured to the slab with both arms, "That is amazing!"

Words eluded me. I stared like a puzzled sand rabbit.

"I've heard all about hex-casters in Zaun, about all the things they do that defy the conventional sciences, and-and the hex crystals, the synthetic ones, how they help make them! But I never thought I'd meet a hex-caster here!"

Now I was the one who could not understand, but so suddenly through that confusion, I felt lighter. Ekko felt lighter. He began to pace around, as if he followed the fast changing turns of his words

"One second you were laughing, then rocks started coming out of the ground, and that thing was coming to us, and-and we were surfing across this huge place on that hunk of stone— and we were going so, so fast— and I've never seen anything like it in Zaun, or in my whole life, and I just... I just couldn't understand at it first, but it was all so awesome! I still can't believe that happened!"

When he had finished, I had almost rendered a stare.

"You're not afraid?"

He turned to me.

"No! Why would I be? If you showed that power of yours to the snipes and folks back home, they'd be jumping-through-the-grates impressed! You're doing things we can only do through technology, things that we want to have in our technology, and-" His hand strayed to his cylinder, dangling by his hip, but he shook his head. "Point is, hex isn't something we're afraid of. The Pilties may hide lots of the wonders upside, but hex is something both of us cities have known ever since, maybe even before they built Old Hungry, and Old Hungry is older than Zaun."

"But I could have hurt you! I forced stone out of the ground without warning and almost hurled you halfway across the dunes! Did that not scare you?"

His look faded to the shadowed earth and his smile softened.

"Well, maybe it did, but I get that you didn't mean to do it, and I believe you. I'm from a place where the uncontrollable meets the insane. Stuff like that happens all the time in Zaun." He looked back to me, then his smile lifted again. "What's one more in Shurima?"

It was as if some boulder fell upon me, only to explode and dissipate into cool winds.

"But that, that stone-weaving hex thing, you do? That's definitely a first, a wonderful first for someone like me. What else can you do with it?"

My eyes could tell no emotion, save for some growing surprise.

"I mean, would that be okay? I won't be scared, but it's your call."

I stood there, mouth gaped and morphing slowly into a wicker smile as I shook my head, almost unable to understand why he could call it 'wonderful' when it had almost struck him and threatened his life. There was that curious gleam in his eyes, not something that concealed intent like with the mages of Noxus or that held tired interest like those of the Ionians and Piltovians, but a kind of child's look that genuinely wondered what happens next.

"I, uh, I can..." I began weaving, but without much thought of what I wanted to make, and so my fingers crafted a pattern I had practiced time and again. "Here."

The first threads to come out was a hank of stone, made out of two thick threads in a formation that made them appear like two strings coiling into one another, like two serpents curling upwards, their bodies not touching. It was a form Master Yasuo taught me long ago.

Ekko was breath-taken, for he approached it, looking over the symmetry and shape of what I brought of the ground with wide eyes. He would squat, tilt his head, or run a hand through the stone. Like with his weight upon my slab earlier, the touch of his palm over the threads communicated through my weaving, and I felt it through my fingers in a speck of blurred sensation, like a pellet of wood gliding through thin silk.

"No way..."

I lifted my arms up, to the second part of the exercise. The two threads twisted even closer until their stones molded into one pure, solid shape, and floated above the ground. Ekko stood back, and watched in awe, his eyes turned up as if he were again looking at the sun for the first time. The stone now bent inward, curling into itself, until it had become a smooth ball of granite.

"You can combine stones, change their shape, and suspend them in air using only your fingers..." He said, his look unmoved.

"It takes a great deal of focus to weave stone this precisely..."

Then, to the final part of the exercise, the ball fell to the ground, and spun like a vase on a potter's wheel, sending powders of stony dust. Slowly, the sphere of stone stretched upward, into an oblong, and then molded into a cylinder. It stopped spinning, but I was not finished, for I pinched the center of this cylinder, until it seemed two opposing cones, one above and one below, balancing on their tips. This took Ekko's attention even more. He focused on the impossible center, balanced by the craft of my hands, the final result of this pattern. Though I was finished weaving the shape, I remained silent. Maintaining its balance still required some effort. That too, was part of the exercise.

"And it's not falling... You're keeping it upright all on your own. How come you can control it so well now when just a while ago... you know?"

I sighed.

"Whenever my feelings are too much to bear, the earthen threads weave on their own."

Ekko turned to me. There was no smile on his face. I realized that he was reflecting my expression.

"Why is that?"

I have journeyed far to answer that question which I myself held long ago, and the answers I had found were many and correct in their own ways, like the cultures I have met, but I have always kept to what I learned from Master Yasuo when he taught me this pattern, for it was a pattern to exercise control, balance, and what he lectured me, I told Ekko.

"It is a piece of me, an expression of who I am, much like the tongue I speak. My stone-weaving is closely intertwined with my emotions just as my words and actions are. The same way one cannot control what he says or does in intense joy, anger, or sorrow, I cannot control the pattern of the stones when I have such feelings, and so I must be careful, even when I am not weaving the earth. I must be careful with myself."

As I explained, Ekko's look returned to the figure I had woven.

"I've never thought of hex that way... A part of you, huh?" I felt him turn to me. "So that's why you pulled the stones out while you were laughing? You just couldn't help it."

I nodded without looking. A portion of my focus had to remain, keeping the stone balanced, yet I went back to that memory, of laughing so much because of some awkward introduction. It was less heavy to remember now. Ekko continued,

"Well, I didn't think it would be that funny. How was that too much of an emotion?"

I smiled.

"It has been long since I laughed because of someone else, and you were being... silly. Is that the right word?"

"Huh, silly. I guess it is." He said, a smirk shifting his words, "but I sure as Gray wasn't the only one being silly."

I turned to Ekko, wondering what he meant, but he went on,

"I just realized. This thing looks like that drawing I saw, the one you did in that cave?"

I returned to looking at the slab, and tilted my head. Like two triangles meeting at their tips, the two cones met much the same way.

"Hm. You are right. Perhaps it—"

"HWAH!"

A loud scream cracked from his side. Something quickly approached me. I twisted, shocked, and found Ekko thrusting forward his arms with his foot stomping forward. I stumbled away from him, yelping.

"AH!"

The two balancing stone cones tumbled as I jumped back. Eyes wide, I looked at him, unable to understand. He surprised me. Then, again, he began laughing.

"Why—"

But I stopped, already realizing what this meant from his laughter. My lips and brows crumpled, unimpressed but confused all the same. A moment ago, he was grieving. Now he was laughing.

His brief mirth died down, for he noticed my wordless glare.

"What? Was just curious. Seems 'surprise' isn't a strong feeling then. Well, I knew it wasn't."

The threads, when lost from control, were nothing to make fun of, and to test them was an act as foolish as it was dangerous. Though I knew his name, he was a stranger still, and I wanted to warn him not to do that again for our sake, but I stayed my lips. He still stood there, having witnessed what I could do, yet he dared to once again unleash the same force that had almost struck him.

He truly was not afraid. Maybe this was his kindness to me.

"I see how it is." I said.

"In Zaun, we call it 'standing even'. You surprised me so now I surprise you. Simple as gears. So I guess we're even no— woah!"

Catching a tile of stone, he fell to the ground and on his rear.

"Oof!"

For I was prepared to retaliate, I stilled my laughter, and gave only a light smile.

"Now that is a strong feeling, is it not?"

"Yeah." He set the stone away, pulled himself up, and brought himself to smirk almost forcibly as he did so."Sure is. It's better than what you did a while ago though." Then, he looked at me and noticed something before speaking, "Don't worry about it, I can take a hit."

But he misunderstood my expression. A bright gleam dispelled the shadows upon the earth.

"Your crystal."

It had rolled out of his cylinder when Ekko fell. When I mentioned this, Ekko's face suddenly grew wide and frantic. It took only a moment for him to find the radiant crystal he kept. Once he did, he grasped it quickly and held it close in his hands.

"Fell out." He murmured and began to stare at it as he did in the cave. No shadows formed where the amber crystal shined. It was truly like a piece of the sun; a fragment, a tear, resting warmly in his palms. Gems of great power were not untold in the tales and legends of the lands. I wondered if it were the same in Zaun, but I did not ask him. It was, after all, sacred. He chose not to say much about it.

After a while, he returned the crystal to the inside of his cylinder, trying to position it in such a way that it would not fall, but he fumbled as he did so. I began to notice how the light of the crystal gleamed at his side despite being kept inside the husk that was his cylinder. I remembered the Nivim and their eyes like starved men before the crystal's light. It needed to be safe, for his sake, and hidden, for ours. I stepped forward.

"I can help."

In a pure second, I felt that I knew nothing about him at all. A single glance told uncertainty, distrust. The eyes of a stranger.

"How?"

"Place the crystal inside."

There was a pause, as if my instruction needed thought, but then his hands moved. He unclipped the cylinder and stowed the crystal inside it.

"Hold the cylinder out, that I can see the gash."

He did as I said. The crystal rested inside and beneath the broken glass, like a perpetual flame concealed in a dark confine behind a torn clear sheet. His eyes did not leave it.

With the tugs and pulls of my hands, I took a strip of stone from the sculpture that had tumbled from when Ekko shocked me, and suspended it above the cylinder. He watched in quiet amazement, his look now tied to the stone floating in front of him. I shut my eyes and felt only the threads of stone coming down upon the metal cylinder. It touched the cold glass, and then, with outstretched fingers, I pulled the threads, thinning the stone as I did so.

"How in the world..." Ekko said. He mumbled more words, but I ignored them. I needed to concentrate.

I imagined a spindle, one like Babajan's, collecting the loose wool of sheep into fine threads, and thought of the stone that way. I spread them over the center of the cylinder, looping them around the device, until they had encased it completely. I was about to tell Ekko to begin rotating the cylinder so that his palm would not have to get in the way of the encasing stone, but he did this without my advice, and the work was done much faster.

I opened my eyes. There was Ekko's face, eyes wide, amazed at the woven stone. The cylinder was now banded by a single piece of dark granite. It covered the gash and obscured the crystal's light.

"You made the rock move so impossibly fluid... So this how you fixed my shirt..."

"Is the cylinder any heavier for you to carry?"

"No! The stone's so thin I could barely feel a difference." He clipped the cylinder back to the side of his thick leggings. The stone did its work, for the noticeable amber gleam was now gone, and the crystal was safe inside. Ekko looked at me. "Thanks. This'll work for now. Won't have to worry about it falling off any more."

"Or having it be seen by the wrong person. We will be traveling far. It is best not to carry anything that attracts attention."

"Yeah, you're right. Same advice you'd hear in Zaun. I guess this place isn't too different."

Despite him speaking of Zaun, I felt the need to question the crystal and the cylinder he carried. It was obviously precious and sacred, and I suspected that it had something to do with his appearing in Shurima. However, it was just as obvious that he did not want to speak of it and that only stretched my curiosity. He had made it clear to me, though, that he intended it to be a secret to remain, not like my stone-weaving. It was his secret, one that will remain unknown to me until we inevitably separate.

He was no weaver but there seemed to be no other explanation for him coming to this land. He understood that I did not mean to hurt him. I dared to think that he had done something similar, and so I still wondered. Maybe he was weaver too. I felt myself preparing to ask, but stopped. Maybe that was part of his secret. If he was anything like me, then perhaps I understood now.

He would not want me to be afraid. So there was no need to let me know.

"The shade we have now wanes to the rise of the sun. We must be going."

Ekko nodded. Before we went, we drank a portion from our waterskins and readied ourselves on the slab. The waters rushed beneath. They traced our direction, and as the slab moved forward, to the south west, where Greater Shurima lies, Ekko remarked on how this reminded him of speed-boards in Zaun before the winds yet again silenced any possibility of exchanging and left us to our own thoughts.

The crystal, the cylinder, and the orb of light... Tales were sewn underneath them, underneath his words, but he kept those hidden, for reasons I will probably never know. My curiosity remained frustrated but I knew better not to let it come between us, yet the idea of knowing, by accident or by decision, wandered in my thoughts, and I remembered when I had learned of Yasuo's name and of the meaning of Sivir's blood. Those were secrets to me at first. I did not know why, but I took comfort in that fact, and thought nothing more of Ekko, as I wove the slab to the course of the waters below.

* * *

AN: More and more development. This was a fun chapter to write; a little comedic break here, a hint of fluff there, then a reminder of more serious and pressing things, and, finally, movement. It was lovely. Again with the dumb smiles as I was writing. I can't seem to run out of steam for this story. Oh well, I hope this one flow is natural and that I got their interaction and all its awkwardness, right. They are, after all, teenagers. I had some doubts that I may be rushing a few developments in my intent to have more brevity, but I felt comfortable enough reading this again and again. I can only hope that it is the same for you readers.

Thank you to those who continue to follow and offer feedback. I am grateful you readers appreciate this story and I still have so much planned for you guys to see, but of course, that does not mean my story is free from any criticism, so if you have anything to point out, by all means tell me so that I can improve.

Thank you guys again. See you on the next one!

 **Important Update** : I have decided to stop publishing this story chapter by chapter and instead focus on completing the entire story first. My reason for this is simple: I've noticed that I get hooked up on waiting for feedback, to the point that I don't feel as motivated to write unless I see a review pop up. The influence on waiting on feedback per chapter is too much, and what happens is that I get large periods of not writing which affects the momentum and continuity of the story's contents (I've noticed this most particularly with this chapter). This is not a problem with just this story, but most of my other stories as well, and so it stems from a flaw in my writing attitude.

This will basically come down to me publishing the complete story in an undetermined date while I work to complete in total silence from any feedback. This is a major step to my improvement as a writer, and indeed, a very difficult one, but I hope to have you guys read a consistent and high-quality story, uninterrupted by super long waits per chapter. I'd very much rather have the entire story prepared and published at once or in weekly intervals.

So I'll be honest and say that you guys will be waiting for a long, long time, possibly months, before seeing anything from this story again and I can only hope that you can bear with me on this. The fact that I am making such a paramount decision on this story means that I intend to complete it, and I would like to do so without long personal hiatuses that ultimately frustrate both the reader and the writer.

Overall, I expect that I will be writing faster, more cohesively, and more closer to the way that original/traditional writing is done (that is, without any feedback from a reader base at all), and this is particularly useful since I'm transitioning to writing original works. I have made significant progress since this decision and I've noticed that my writing quality has improved since I'm writing more consistently and without time and reader pressure.

If you have any questions or would like to hear an update on the progress of this story, feel free to PM me. Reviews are still welcome but of course I won't be checking them as often now that I have decided to complete this first. I sincerely hope to finish this story, as I am still in love with its concept, and I hope that in time, you guys will enjoy the full and unfettered results of my work.


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